The Great King (22 page)

The Spartans and Athenians were very slow off the line. Indeed, they seemed to merely trot while all four other teams galloped.

As a charioteer, I knew what that meant. It meant that they expected trouble – collisions – and they wanted to be able to make big turns on the first lap, even if it lost time. In outside lanes, you need the help of the gods. I heard men hiss at them, but I felt the tactic was sound.

Especially when the Syracusan chariot refused to give way for the Corinthian. The whole pack of four was thundering into the first turn with two chariots trapped outside the pole. It is hard enough to turn with the pole – it can be harder to turn outside.

By the time all four had made the turn, both outside chariots had lost speed. The Syracusan’s horses almost tangled with the Corinthian car, and there was a gasp, but the Corinthian flicked his whip back and struck the Syracusan off-lead, and the horse faltered, lost a pace, and the Syracusan fell back.

The Athenians were already in the inside lane.

The Spartans were comfortably behind them.

So the Syracusans had to fall all the way back to sixth. They were all around the first turn, and they thundered down the back stretch in line – Ceos, Corinth, Aegina, Athens, Sparta and Syracusa well behind, trying to get his horses back into their pace. They held this formation through the second turn, and they were one lap down.

To me, it appeared that the Ceosians and the Corinthians were running too fast. They set a terrible pace, and the Aeginians matched it. But the Athenian charioteer wasn’t interested, and kept his horses in hand – fast, but not at the pace. He wasn’t going to give a full lap, but he was saving speed.

The Spartan, Polypeithes, looked magnificent, his knees well flexed, his shoulders level, his hands steady, and he stuck to the Athenian. I thought he was wise.

Ahead of them, the Corinthian took aim at the Ionian as they entered the fourth lap. As he came out of the turn, he cracked his whip and let his horses go to their full stride, and they stretched out for him. We could hear him urging them, and they responded.

The Ceosian charioteer raised his hands slightly, and his smaller horses gave another spurt – and held their position. Just before the turn, the Corinthian had to fall back – again.

He thundered around the turn on the outside, his turn beautifully judged. But he lost ground with every stride, and now the Aeginians were in second place.

The Corinthians didn’t go for the third place on the inside. They stayed outside, and ran. Down the back stretch, the Corinthians passed two teams, and on the turn into the fifth lap, they tried to close to the pole. The Corinthian was fully committed – he was leaning as far as a man can lean in a car, and his horse could not have had any more speed to offer. Nor will most horses give a magnificent effort more than once in a race – even horses have morale.

The African Corinthian went for all the knuckle bones.

He cut right across the Ceosians, and later it was said he flicked his whip at them. Perhaps. But the smaller Ceosian team baulked, and the Corinthians swept by. The Ceosians lost their pace and their tempo, and swerved – struck the turning post a glancing blow and slowed still further, and the Athenians pulled well out to pass. The team from Aegina was jammed in behind the Ionian team, unable to manoeuvre and forced to slow almost to a stop as the Athenians and then the Spartans and finally the Syracusans thundered by on the outside. By a miracle, no one was injured – no horse fell, no cart broke up. But by the time the Ceosian was moving again, the Ionian and the Aeginian were a full length – half the hippodrome – behind.

This sudden reversal of fortune – not uncommon in the hippodrome – left the Corinthians in the front by a whole chariot length, with the Athenians second and the Spartans third. The Syracusans were a distant fourth, and the Aeginians and Ceosians were well back. But with only five laps run, the race was barely a fifth done.

They ran four laps in that formation, and the Corinthian, now in front where he’d wanted to be, forced a terrible pace. He didn’t plan to slow from a gallop, and he ran off the laps so fast that his opponents began to lose heart. The Athenians wanted to run a slower race with a fast finish, but the expert Corinthian charioteer wasn’t having it.

Through the tenth lap, the Athenians, Spartans and Syracusans held the pace. But in the back stretch of ten, the Athenians – in second place and on the rail – began to slow from a hard gallop to a slower pace.

The Corinthian shot ahead.

The Spartans stayed with the Athenians, and the Syracusan made two attempts in the next two laps to pass them but could not, and the Ionoians and Aeginians were now too far behind to regain the distance unless a miracle occurred – the Ceosian team, in particular, looked very tired.

On the thirteenth lap, the Corinthian came up behind the other chariots and began passing them. He took the Ceosians after a brief struggle and many glares and some shouted words, and then passed the Aeginian chariot after a whole lap of racing side by side. On the fifteenth lap, he slipped by the Syracusans, suggesting to the crowd – as I already suspected – that the Syracusan charioteer wasn’t as good as he needed to be at this level.

Sixteen laps out of twenty-seven, and the Corinthian team was a lap ahead of everyone but the Athenians and the Spartans.

Coming into the turn for lap seventeen, the Athenians moved into the pole, and just as the Corinthian team pulled out to pass on the turn, the Spartans – up until then almost spectators – pulled out as if to pass as well, blocking the Corinthian chariot. The Corinthian pulled out farther and again set his horses to run full out – he angled out to pass the Spartans.

The Spartan driver was thundering up on the turn, but he did not turn. In fact, he edged his horse a little farther outside. His very slight acceleration was either ferociously lucky or perfectly timed – the Corinthian was caught outside him and without room to cut back, and the whole car was briefly up on one wheel.

Then the Spartan abruptly decelerated and turned sharply – an incredible turn, shockingly dangerous. The Spartan car did not quite flip over, and seemed to turn at right angles – and left the Corinthian a whole chariot length outside the rail and at a virtual stop.

The Syracusans and then the Aeginians and then the Ceosians thundered by inside, and the Corinthian spent two laps getting back up to his speed. And now his horses were not running as well. The Athenians had lost no speed, and the Spartan team was less than half a length behind them, and as the censor marked the twentieth lap, the Athenian charioteer saluted the crowd, bent forward – and gave his horses some secret signal of hand or voice, and they were off.

They ran, not like the wind, but like a gale. They ate the ground between them and the Corinthian, and took him on the mid-lap turn in the twenty-first lap. It was a magnificent performance by the Athenian charioteer, who showed his mastery – in his acceleration, in his timing, in his voice. He took the Corinthian at the very end of the turn. Then, as his car swerved in to fill the inside lane . . .

He slowed abruptly.

Again the Corinthian had to swerve, but again, there was nowhere to go. The Spartan team was already coming up outside. The Corinthian’s mouth showed his anger – and he wilfully tried to slam his car into the Spartan horses, but the Athenian was decelerating too hard, and unless the Corinthian was willing to risk a messy death he had to rein in, and he did, cursing so loudly he could be heard in the stands.

Every Athenian was on his feet – many had their hands on their mouths, silent as their charioteer handed the race to the Spartans.

But by my side, Cimon had tears in his eyes, and he thumped my back.

Polypeithes got his team up to the fullest of gallops and blew past the slowing Athenian team just before the turn. He leaned, and for a moment I was afraid he wasn’t up to it – but he shaved the post and completed his turn, his cart bouncing slightly as it skidded out behind the horses like an empty stone-hauling sled dragged on smooth marble by eager boys.

The Corinthian wasn’t through.

He got around the Athenian on anger and will, and flicked his whip at his horses, and they responded one more time, heads up, willing, it appeared, to burst their hearts. They came down the front stretch of the twenty-second lap, and it seemed possible that they had kept a little in reserve. On the back stretch, the Corinthian made his move, whipping his horses repeatedly – and then striking at the Spartan horses.

Sometimes, men make plans. It was clear to every man in the crowd that the Athenians had agreed to support the Spartans.

But sometimes, the gods take a hand.

At the final post of twenty-second lap, the Ceosian team was stumbling. The horses were exhausted, and the charioteer was having trouble keeping them on the course and at speed. He didn’t take the turn – for him, the last turn of lap nineteen – as close as he ought. In fact, he was ten feet off the post, and his chariot was moving at a trot.

And Polypeithes chose to put his team
inside
the Ionian team. He chose to cut from the outside position almost at right angles to the pole – a little like a man threading a needle in the dark.

Once again, he did the complicated manoeuvre he’d executed so well early on – he slowed, and pivoted his chariot on the inside wheel, the horses running through an elaborate double curve.

In the three heartbeats in which he executed the manoeuvre, he had every man in the crowd on his feet.

The Corinthian had to manoeuvre to avoid a wreck – the Ceosians got their heads turned back inward and went up the inside lane no faster than a brisk trot – and the Athenians were past the Corinthians on the inside and then past the Ionians on the outside – a magnificent double overtake – and then the Spartans and the Athenians were running free.

And perhaps the Athenians did not ‘give’ the race to Sparta, because those Spartan horses were
fast.
They ran, and the unmatched Athenians ran – they ran, and they ran, and the Athenians gained back a whole chariot length, so that when they crossed the final line and the heralds raised their wands, the lead Athenian horse was even with Polypeithes.

But no more.

And the Spartans swept to victory.

Cimon roared by my side, and even Aristides thumped my back. My Athenian friends, who had no doubt negotiated the ‘chariot alliance’ for King Leonidas.

Perhaps I’ve told my story badly. But as the Spartan team swept to victory, and the young Spartiate was granted the right to wear the crown of laurel – and to serve in the king’s bodyguard all his life – in that moment, the Spartan peace party was defeated, and the alliance between Athens and Sparta – never, as you know, the best of friends – was sealed. It was sealed because Athens sacrificed an Olympic chariot race and because, as usual, a lot of Plataeans were doing the dirty work.

Fierce as the dragon scaled in gold

Through the deep files he darts his glowing eye;

And pleased their order to behold,

His gorgeous standard blazing to the sky,

Rolls onward his Assyrian car,

Directs the thunder of the war,

Bids the wing’d arrows’ iron storm advance

Against the slow and cumbrous lance.

What shall withstand the torrent of his sway

When dreadful o’er the yielding shores

The impetuous tide of battle roars,

And sweeps the weak opposing mounds away?

So Persia, with resistless might,

Rolls her unnumber’d hosts of heroes to the fight.

Aeschylus, The Persians 472 BCE

I didn’t go straight to Susa. Nor did I mention that when Astylos won the diaulos, our Styges was less than a man’s height behind him, placing third, nor that another Plataean was in the final heat. This was the best performance by Plataeans in the games for many years, and only the endless work of keeping Polypeithes alive and his horses uninjured kept us from the wildest party since the fire was brought to men. And, of course, we were out of wine.

The aftermath of any great event is a terrible crash, and the Olympics are no different. Every day, and every night, had been so fine – so much good talk, so many friends, so much camaraderie – heroism, and even beauty – that to break camp and pack and march with the crowds down to the sea seemed like the descent into Hades, and the want of spirit was dark for most men. But I had announced that I would sail for Athens with Cimon, and together we took many friends home. Aristides had business of his own, but we had Themistocles and all the Plataeans. I’m sure Draco came with me as much to make sure I came home as anything else. My beloved brother-in-law crushed me to him and demanded that I come and guest with him and then strode away after giving me the oddest look. He had business in Argos and would ride home. With his party went Empedocles, who gave me a great embrace and promised to visit me in Plataea.

We sailed south, into the same seas that had been so storm-tossed a month before, but now it was early summer, and the seas were packed with ships – Italiote traders, Illyrian tin ships, Corinthian merchantmen and warships, and Athenians – Athenian ships on every hand. We camped on beaches all the way down the coast of the Peloponnese, rowing all the way under the new summer sun and into constantly adverse winds, and my rowers, fat and hung over from a week at the Olympics playing at being gentlemen, discovered a new talent for grumbling.

But we weathered the Hand, the local name for the promontory, and turned east into the Laconian gulf and the wind changed, and our voyage took on a little bit of a holiday air. We camped on Kythera, enjoyed a feast of greasy mutton, drank the execrable local wine, and probably left a population increase. From Kythera we sailed across the blue water, our oars dry, all the way into Hermione, and spent the night under the pine trees by the temple, listening to a pair of musicians who were training there – beautiful stuff. A pair of oarsmen – Nicolas and Giorgios, who’d been with me since Iberia – left the ship to make a pilgrimage to Epidavros, and I wished them well and directed them to rejoin at Athens if they so desired, and we went due east for Athens, give or take a point, and had sweet weather, making the long blue water crossing in a day and a night so that we raised Piraeus with the rising of the sun.