I stayed to the end, looking on or thinking, but thinking mostly. When it was over, and shadows began to fall, I threaded the loosening crowd, all talking by now of nothing but the games, and peered about for the red head of Anakreon. He, at least, would not have spent last night over the river.
He was with a crowd when I sighted him. As soon as he saw me, he shed the others with graceful ease, and hurried up to me, saying out of breath, “Wherever have you been? I’ve been looking all day for you, I thought you’d gone.”
“Gone? Where? I was on the women’s side.”
“Oh, is that all? I wish I’d known.”
His face looked quite drawn. I said, “But what did you think? That I’d left Olympia?” He said nothing. “I was all night with Lyra. All I’ve heard is rumor in the crowd. Are things really so bad? What are they saying? Where can we talk?”
We were by the old Hera temple; there was a quiet corner in its peristyle of black ancient timber. “Anakreon, the Archons cannot have done this thing. Don’t tell me you believe it?”
He gave me a long look, and sighed. “My dear, I don’t know. I have seen so much evil in my time, there’s little I can’t believe. You’ve known them longer. I was hoping that you’d tell me.”
“Let’s walk,” I said. We went up into the dusky oak wood. There was an ancient tree split by a thunderbolt, by Zeus in the Titan War as like as not. Half still stood, half was felled, the fire-marks long washed with rain. No one was in earshot, and we sat down.
I said, “My mind’s been on it all through the pentathlon. I don’t even know who won the foot-race—four years to the next, and by then one may be dead … Well, I’ve thought, and I can’t believe it. If it was done, it must have been by Hippias; he’s sole ruler in all but name. And he’s the most god-fearing man I ever knew; he wakes and sleeps by it. Can you see him violating a sacred precinct and a sacred truce, in one stroke? He’d as soon dance naked through the Kerameikos.”
“I think so, too.” He pulled a piece of pale lichen off the log, shook out the grubs, and peered at it. His short sight hid from him many imperfections; it gave him, I daresay, as much pleasure as it took away. Close to, he could count the veins on a fly’s wing. “Exquisite. Like Thessalian goldwork … Sometimes I’ve thought there might be more in Hipparchos than meets the eye. Power does not much concern him. But a slight, I’ve noticed, concerns him a good deal.”
“Hipparchos!” I gazed at him amazed. But then, it was true he had seen much evil. “He’d never be a man for a knife in the dark. I suppose like anyone he’d avenge an insult; but he’s not had one. Kimon was his father’s benefactor, and that’s the end of it. He owed nothing to the sons, and he could have promised nothing. It wasn’t in his power.”
Anakreon’s face lightened. He had been through bad times, and did not want to think they could come again. I could understand it. I went on, “Kimon and Hipparchos can barely know each other. Kimon’s a real country squire; the arts mean nothing to him. As for Hipparchos, he likes the graces. He takes nothing very seriously, even love.”
“Fortunate man!” He sighed and lifted his eyes. “My dear, you have lifted a load from me. If you’d known my need of you, you’d have lain less easy last night.”
I laughed; we brushed the bark from us, and, ready for supper, strolled down among the trees. In the open glade, touched with the yellow light of sunset, people were strolling in twos and threes. “You were saying, my dear, that you missed the winner of the footrace. Look, there he is. An Athenian, too. The Archons made him a present.”
The young man was dark-haired and dark-eyed, walking lightly, with the springy step of a runner, still wearing the ribbons tied by his friends round his head and arm. “It comes back to me now,” I said. “He ran a good race and used his head; but I missed his name.”
“I heard it. It will come to me in a moment. Oh, yes. Aristogeiton, son of Theotimos.”
10
KIMON’S MURDERERS WERE NEVER found. His son, who had come with him to the games, soon made it clear that he did not suspect the Archons. I was there when he accepted their sympathy as that of friends, and said that he blamed himself more than anyone. Like me, he had spent the night on the women’s side. Not that his father had opposed it; he had laughed and wished him joy; but if they had been together, he might be still alive. This young Miltiades was no fool, as he proved, when the Medes came, to everyone’s satisfaction; he knew the court and both the Archons well, and what satisfied him has always been good enough for me. But even he could think of no enemies his father could have had. He wondered if one of the losers could have killed him out of envy. Such things are rare, but not quite unknown.
However, if Kimon had no enemies, the Pisistratids had them. Olympia buzzed with Alkmaionids, like a wasp-nest poked with a stick.
If an exile meets a man from his former city, what is more natural than a talk to ask for news? Olympia seemed quite full of Alkmaionids and friends, always just out of earshot.
Next day was Full Moon, when the contests are only for boys, because the great procession, and the Hundred-Ox Sacrifice, take up all the morning. All the Hellene cities send their embassies to carry offerings; and all Hellas had come to expect that the one from Athens would be the finest. I had made the song for the choir to sing. I had not, of course, been asked to walk in the procession. People on show for their city have to be well-favored. I felt some remorse towards Anakreon, who I was sure would have been invited, had Hipparchos not feared it would seem like a slight to me.
Athens excelled all other cities. Yet it was surpassed; and by the Alkmaionids.
They were men without a city; but anyone who thought they’d be stopped by that never knew the family. When, sounding with flutes and lyres and sweet trained voices, heralded by trumpets, and carrying precious spices, the sacred theoria from Delphi came pacing in, it was Alkmaionid in all but name.
Nobody was surprised, who’d been at the last Pythian Games. It was in my father’s day that Apollo’s temple at Delphi was burned down. When I first saw it as a boy, there was just a makeshift shelter over the sanctuary; nothing had been left but the Pythia’s cave below. That comes of thatch and timber; for decades all Hellas had been sending offerings to house the god decently in stone. Then the splendid Alkmaionids offered to complete the building at their own cost. When they had finished the work in stone, they faced it all with marble. Apollo, it is true, had always been the patron god of their house. At any rate, thenceforth they were as welcome to him—at least, to his priests and prophetess—as the swallows in the temple eaves. I never yet heard of an Alkmaionid getting a bad oracle at Delphi.
They were richer even than the Pisistratids. Everyone knows how old Alkmaion founded their fortunes. Kroisos, that golden king, befriended him, and, like a generous host, offered him as much gold as he could carry by himself out of the treasury, thinking he’d come out with both hands full. Alkmaion bound his girdle tight round his hips, and put on wide-topped boots; filled everything he wore with gold, and came out like a waddling moneybag. Kroisos, they say, when he’d got his breath back enjoyed the joke; he had plenty more, as Kyros discovered later, when he took it all. For the Alkmaionids, that was just the beginning. They had married into money far and wide, they owned the best land in the Attic plains; and Pisistratos, when he told them there was not room in Attica both for him and them, never took away their estates. The income still reached them; they still entered chariots at the games; and Hippias, from policy or discretion, had let them and their money be. They had too many offshoots and fellow clansmen still in Attica; their power in exile was a less evil than war or stasis. It was to be reckoned with, however. A great lord in exile will not be content with owning land that he cannot tread, even though he can live on it like a prince elsewhere. He wants the house of his fathers; their tombs, where he should offer sacrifice; and, above all, their former rank there, in the days when their word was law. Even those born in exile sucked in all this with their mothers’ milk. They were bitter; and Kimon’s murder was meat and drink to them. They put it about all over Hellas that the Archons did it, and thousands believe it still. I never have, though I could have profited by saying so in later years.