Killer of Men (4 page)

‘If I wanted to be a Theban,’ he said, ‘I’d have gone there when I was young.’ He made the word
Theban
sound dirty, but the priest took no offence.

And then the priest turned back to me.

‘That boy needs to learn his letters,’ he said.

Pater nodded. ‘Good thing for a smith to know,’ he agreed.

My heart soared. I wanted nothing –
nothing
– more than to be a smith.

‘I could take him to school,’ the priest said.

Pater shook his head. ‘You’re a good priest,’ Pater said, ‘but my boy won’t be a
pais
in Thebes.’

Again the priest took no offence. ‘You won’t teach the boy yourself, ’ he said. No question to it.

Pater looked at me, nodded, agreeing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s my curse – I’ve no time for them. Teaching takes too long and I grow angry.’ He shrugged.

The priest nodded. ‘There’s a hero’s tomb with a priest up the mountain,’ he said.

‘Leitos,’ Pater said. ‘He went to Troy. Calchas is the priest. A drunk, but a good man.’

‘He can write?’ the priest asked.

Pater nodded.

The next morning, I rose with the sun to see the priest go. I held his hand in the courtyard while he thanked the god and Pater for his cup, and Pater was happy. He reminded Pater that I was to learn to write, and Pater swore an oath unasked, and the thing was done. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it, but that was Pater’s way – a thing worth doing was done.

The priest went to the gate and blessed Bion. Pater took his hand and was blessed in turn. ‘May I have your name, priest?’ he asked. Back then, men didn’t always share their names.

The priest smiled. ‘I’m Empedocles,’ he said.

He and Pater shook hands the initiates’ way. And then the priest came to me. ‘You will be a philosopher,’ he said.

He was dead wrong, but it was a nice thing to hear at the age of six or seven, or whatever I was.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Arimnestos,’ I answered.

2

It must seem strange to you, sitting in Heraklea, where we rule Propontis as far as the wild tribes, that in Boeotia two towns a day’s walk apart could be inveterate enemies. It’s true – we told the same jokes and we worshipped the same gods, and we all read Homer and Hesiod, praised the same athletes and cursed the same way – but Thebes and Plataea were never friends. They were big, dandified, and they thrust their big noses in where we didn’t want them. They had a ‘federation’, which was a fancy way of saying that they would run everything and the old ways could go to Tartarus, and all the small poleis could just obey.

So I was five, or perhaps six, when Pater went away and came back wounded, and the men of Thebes had the best of it. They didn’t harry our orchards or burn our crops, but we submitted and they forced little Plataea to accept their laws.

And there it might have remained, if it hadn’t been for the Daidala.

You think you know all about the Daidala, my dear – because I am master here, and I make the peasants celebrate the festival of my youth. But listen, thugater – it was on the slopes of Cithaeron that Zeus first feared to lose the love of his wife, Hera. She left him, for he is a bad husband, and he cheated on her – and you must tell me, should your husband ever forsake your bed. I’ll see to it that he returns, or he’ll wear his guts for a
zone
.

At any rate, she left him, and when she was gone, as is the way with men, he missed her. So he asked her back. But when you are a god, and the father of gods – aye, or when you are merely a mortal man and full of your own importance – it is hard to ask forgiveness, and harder still to be refused.

So Zeus went into Boeotia, and in those days there were kings. He found the king – a Plataean, of course – and asked him for advice.

The king thought about it for a day. If he had any sense, he asked his own wife. Then he went back to mighty-thewed Zeus, and he no doubt shrugged at the irony of it all. And he said, ‘Mighty Zeus, first among gods and men, you can win back beautiful cow-eyed Hera if you make her jealous, by making her think that you intend to replace her for ever.’ So he proposed that they make a wooden statue of a beautiful kore, a maiden in a wedding gown. And that they take it to the sacred precincts on the mountain, and imitate the manner of men and women going to a wedding.

‘Hera will come in all her glory to destroy her usurper,’ the king said. ‘And when she sees that it’s nothing but a billet of wood, she’ll be moved to laughter. And then you’ll be reconciled.’

Perhaps Zeus thought it was the silliest plan he’d ever heard, but he was desperate. To an old man like me, it seems a deeply cynical plan. But for all that, it worked. The wedding procession wound up the hillside, and Hera came and destroyed the statue with her powers. Then she saw that she had merely burned a piece of wood, and she laughed, and she and Zeus were reconciled, and celebrated their eternal marriage again.

So every town in Boeotia used to take turns to celebrate the Daidala – forty-eight towns, and in the forty-ninth year, the Great Daidala, when the fires burned like the beacons burned when the Medes came. And they would compete to celebrate with the best festival, the largest fire, the finest ornaments on the dresses, the most beautiful kore. But as Thebes’s federation gained power, so Thebes took over the festivals. They would allow no rival, and the Daidala was celebrated only by Thebes – and little Thespiae and our Plataea. Only our two little states dared to insist on our ancient rights.

Now, when the men of Thebes bested us that time, our leaders signed their treaty, accepted their laws and accepted the federation, the way a poor man accepts a bad sausage in the market when he dares not haggle. But the treaty said nothing about the Daidala. And Plataea’s turn was coming – her first turn to celebrate the festival in nigh on fifty years.

For a year after the battle, men said little about it. But then the Plataean Daidala was just a few years away – and towns worked for years to make the festival great. So it was that not long after the priest came to our house – this is how I remember it – and the forge fire was relit, men started to come back to the forge. First they came to have their pots mended, and their ploughs straightened, but soon enough they came to talk. As the weather changed, and Pater worked outside, men would come as soon as their farm work was done – or before – and they would sit on Pater’s forging stumps, or recline against the cow’s fence or her shed. They would bring their own wine and pour it for each other or for Pater, and they would talk.

I was a boy, and I loved to hear men talk. These were plain men, not lords – but not fools, either. Even here in this house I hear the life of the rustic made a thing of fun. Perhaps. Perhaps there are boors who think more of the price of an ass than of a beautiful statue. What of it? How many of these philosophers could plough a straight furrow, eh, girl? There is room in the world for many kinds of wisdom – that was the revelation of my life, and you should write it down.

Hah! It is good to be lord.

At any rate, by the end of the day we’d have the potter, Karpos, son of Phoibos, the wheelwright, Draco, son of Draco, the leather worker, Theron, son of Xenon, some of their slaves and a dozen farmers in the yard. And they would debate everything from the immortality of the gods to the price of wheat at the market in Thebes – and Corinth, and Athens.

Athens. How often in this story will I mention her? Not my city, but crowned in beauty and strong, in a way Plataea could never be strong – yet capricious and sometimes cruel, like a maiden. As you will be, soon enough, my dear. Athens is now the greatest city in the world – but then she was just another polis, and outside of Attica, men paid her little heed.

Yet she was starting to learn her power. I must weary you with some history. Athens had been under a tyranny for forty years – the Pisistratidae. Some say that the tyrants were good for Athens, and some say they were bad. I have friends of both groups, and I suspect the truth was that the tyrants were good in some ways and bad in others.

While the tyrants were lording it over Athens, the world was changing. First, Sparta rose to power, initially by crushing the cities nearest to her, and then by forcing the rest of their neighbours into a set of treaties that compelled them to serve Sparta. Now, in the Peloponnese – everywhere else, too – only men of property fought in the battles. Slaves might throw rocks, and poor farmers might throw a javelin, but the
warriors
were aristocrats and their friends.

Armies were small, because there are, thank the gods, only so many aristocrats in the world. But when Sparta created her ‘League’, she changed the world. Suddenly the Peloponnese could field a bigger army than anyone else. Spartans are great warriors – just ask them – but what made them dangerous was their
size
. Sparta could put ten thousand men in the field.

The other states had to respond. Thebes formed her own league, the Federation of Boeotia, but other states had to find another way to provide that manpower. In Plataea, we took to arming every free man. Even so, we could never, as I have said, muster more than fifteen hundred armed men.

In Athens, the tyrants kept their armies small. They did not permit men to carry arms abroad, and when they had to fight, they hired mercenaries from Thessaly and Scythia. They didn’t trust their people.

Don’t fool yourself, honey. We’re tyrants, too.

At any rate, while I was a boy, the Pisistratidae fell. The survivors ran off to the Great King of Persia and Athens became a democracy. Suddenly, in a day, Athens had the manpower to field a big army – ten thousand hoplites or more. The Athens of my boyhood was like a boy who has just developed his first muscles.

You’ve stayed awake through my history lesson – that fellow who is courting you must be having his effect. The point is – there is a point, honey – that for the first time, Athens was feeling strong, and she was suddenly open as a market for the Plataeans, just over the mountains and guarding the pass to Thebes. Some of the richer farmers had learned that if they carted their olive oil and grain and wine over the mountain to Athens, they fetched a
much
better price than they got in the market of little Plataea – or in the market of mighty Thebes.

I longed to go to Athens. I dreamed of it. I had heard that the whole city was built of Parian marble. Lies, of course, but you have dreams of your own – you know what dreams are like. And we heard that the Alcmaeonidae were building the new Temple of Apollo at Delphi of marble – it had never been done before – and it was a marvel. Draco the wheelwright, as close to a good friend as Pater had, went on a pilgrimage to Delphi and came back singing of the new temple.

Bah, give me that wine cup and never mind an old man’s digressions. Anyway, the talk that summer was of the Daidala and the price of grain.

Epictetus was the richest of the local farmers. He’d been born a slave and made all his wealth from his own sweat, and he might have been old Hesiod reborn. A hard man to cross. But he’d just made the trip to Athens the year before and he swore by it. I remember the day that he pulled up with a wagon full of hired hands.

‘This is the party?’ he said. He had a grim, deep voice.

‘No party here,’ Pater said. He was making a cauldron, a deep one, and the anvil sang with every stroke as he bent the bronze to his will. ‘Just a bunch of loafers avoiding their work!’

There were twenty men around the forge yard, and they all laughed. It was mid-afternoon, and there wasn’t a lazy man there. They had a skin of last year’s wine, the good purple stuff that our grapes make at home, dark as Tyrian dye.

Epictetus got off his wagon and his hired men climbed down. It was a high wagon – Draco’s best work, the kind that would carry five farms’ worth of grain. He had a grown son – Epictetus son of Epictetus – who was a shadow beside his hard-working father.

‘Bring our wine, son,’ the father said, and then he walked into the yard.

It was quite the event, because Epictetus
never
came to loaf in the forge yard. He said that a man had but one life, and any time he wasted counted against him with the gods. He was the only farmer in Boeotia who owned four ploughs. He only needed two, but he built the other two – just in case. He was that sort of man.

So he came into the yard and Pater sent me for a stool from the kitchen. It was like one lord visiting another. I fetched a stool, and Epictetus – the son – poured wine from a heavy amphora for every man in the yard. I had a taste of Pater’s. It was not cheap.

Epictetus looked around. ‘I’ve picked the right day,’ he said. He nodded. ‘I have a thought in my head and I can’t get it out. I wanted to talk to the men – the real men – without giving myself away to the Theban bastards in town.’

Pater handed Bion the new cauldron. ‘Punch her for rivets,’ he said. ‘Did you pour me a new plate?’

Bion nodded. He was better at casting bronze even than Pater. ‘Smooth as a baby,’ he said.

‘He’ll be a rival to you when you free him,’ Draco said.

‘No,’ Pater said. He pulled his leather apron off and tossed it to another slave. Then he poured some water over his head, wiped his face with a rag and walked back. ‘It is good to see you in my yard, and a guest is always a blessing,’ Pater said, and poured a libation. ‘I always have time to listen to you, Epictetus.’

Epictetus bowed. He rose, as if speaking in the assembly. And in a way he was, for in the yard were the leaders of what might have been called the ‘middling’ sort – the men who supported the temples and shrines, who served in war. There were some aristocrats, and two very rich men, but the men in our yard were – well, they were the voice of the farmers, if you like.

‘Men,’ he said. How imposing he was! Tall, strong and burned so dark that he looked like mahogany. Even at fifty, he was someone to be reckoned with. ‘Men of Plataea,’ he began again, and suddenly I knew that he was nervous. That made me nervous, too. Such a strong man? And rich?

‘Last year I went to Athens,’ he said. ‘You know that Athens has overthrown the tyrants. They are gone – fled to the Great King in Persia, or dead.’ He paused and smiled a little. ‘But you know all this, eh? I’m a windbag. Listen. Athens has money – their silver owls are the best coin in Hellas. And they have an army – they muster ten
thousand
hoplites when they go to war.’ He looked around, took a sip of wine. ‘They have so many mouths to feed in their city that they need our grain. Aye – they import grain all the way from Propontis and the Euxine!’

Men shifted restlessly.

‘I’m no hand at this. So here’s what I’m trying to say. We cannot fight Thebes alone. We need a friend. Athens should be that friend. They need our grain.’ He shrugged. ‘I talked to some men in Athens. They talk to farmers as if they were men of substance, in Athens. Not like some bastards I’ve known, eh? And the men I talked to were very interested. Interested in being friends.’

He looked around.

I remember that I found the idea so exciting that I thought I might burst. Athens – glorious Athens, as an ally?

Which goes to show what you know when you’re seven years old. The rest of them shuffled their feet and looked at the ground.

Draco shrugged. ‘Listen, Epictetus. Your idea has merit – and it’s time we started to talk about these things. No man here will deny that we need a friend. But Athens is so
far
. Over the mountains. Five hundred stades as the raven flies – more for a man and a cart.’

Myron, another farmer, leaned forward on his heavy staff. ‘Athens would never send their phalanx over the mountains to protect us,’ he said. He had a scar on his thigh from the same fight where Pater had been made lame. ‘We need a friend with five thousand hoplites who will stand their ground beside us, not a friend who will come and avenge our corpses.’

Epictetus nodded to Myron – they had each other’s measure, those two. ‘It might be true,’ he said. ‘But we need a friend far enough away that he won’t force us to be more than just an ally.’ He looked around. ‘Like Thebes and the so-called federation.’