moving slightly, as if in final rehearsal of a prepared speech.
He looked fit for a man of nearly seventy years. His skin glowed like a ploughman’s in summer-a consequence, no doubt, of a recent sea voyage from his academic posting on Rhodes. His tanned skin set off his abundance of snowy hair and a gleaming white chiton adorned by a purple-fringed girdle. Sitting there, serenely indifferent to the plight of the loose lamb, he seemed to be playing the role of a character who slept very well at night, yet had very important matters weighing on his silver-crested brow. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Swallow, who was old enough to remember Aeschines’s former career on the stage, specializing in kings, gods descendant, and honored corpses lying in state.
The gavel sounded again, this time swung by the presiding judge. The seat was filled, surprisingly, not by a junior functionary but the King Archon himself. The only trials he presided over were supposed to involve special heinousness, such as parricide and profanation of the Mysteries.
“Isn’t that Polycleitus?” Deuteros whispered, noting the same irregularity.
“It is. So they’ve brought Aeschines back, and put Polycleitus in charge. Somebody has a great interest in seeing this Machon put down. Maybe we should change our verdict…”
“Silence in the courtroom!” Polycleitus commanded. “The clerk will read the indictment.”
“Hear O Athens! This court is convened according to all proper custom, under the due supervision of those so charged and here present, before a jury properly appointed, and in the names of Themis-bearer-of-scales and Athena-may-she-protect-us, and of Aglauros, Hestia, Enyo, Ares Enyalios, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone, Heracles, and the spirits of wheat, barley, vines and figs, and of the Boundaries of Attica. We gather here now, on this second day of Pyanopsion, under the archonship of Ciphisodorus, to hear and judge the citizen, Machon, son of Agathon, of the deme Scambonidae, on the charges so listed…”
The clerk had to rustle through his notes, which seemed to be out of order. There was complete silence in the room now, and a general pricking up of ears and lightening of backsides, with the sole exception of the man who brought the lamb, who slumped down from the bench and hit the floor with a thud. No one helped him.
“…the charges of, first, that he did contravene the instructions given him by the Assembly twelve years ago when he set out on campaign with the god, known in his human guise as Alexander III of Macedon; and second, that he did commit impiety before said god, who was deified by decree of the Assembly of the People on the sixteenth Metageitnion of last year. These are the charges.”
“Who brings the indictment?” asked Polycleitus.
“By the gods, I bring it,” said Aeschines, rising to his cue. His voice had a depth typical of actors, but with an orator’s urgency. It broke on the audience like the crash of a falling boulder-abrupt, inescapable.
“Begin your statement. Start the water.”
The clerk pulled the stopper out of the water clock. At the outset, the prosecution had the floor for twenty minutes, with additional time at the discretion of the archon. Blatherers and incompetents were given little indulgence; Aeschines, to be sure, would be given all the time he wanted.
Athenians, I stand before you today after a long time away. In those years among foreigners I had much opportunity to observe the ways of other people, and to weigh their respective features in light of what I know as a citizen of this city. And in that time I never lost faith in the basic superiority of our arrangements, no matter how sadly abused, and in the inherent repugnance of our people against indecency and injustice, no matter how ubiquitous those vices may now seem. And I appear today with complete confidence that you will again judge rightly as I offer you the facts. Please understand that I make such charges with reluctance, and have so only sparingly in the past, because I do not believe our city is well served by frivolous or malign actions. These procedures, on the contrary, should be reserved only for cases of the utmost seriousness, and on the clearest evidence, as I know you will agree is the case with our friend Machon.
I know this, because it is understood throughout this city that verdicts on trials of this type, that is of impiety, have grave implications not only for the accused, but for every citizen, as the gods do not discriminate between the impious man and those who abet him. In this sense, it is our entire city that is on trial. You do not need to be reminded that there is dangerous talk afoot, and that those who have led us into disaster in the past have raised their heads again since the death of Alexander. And given that a foreign army is but a few days’ march from Attica, and that the emissaries of that foreign power are present here today, I am bound by my duty and love of my native city to remind her that her responsibilities are to herself first. As I present these truths to you, your job will be merely to perceive, for to perceive what Machon has done, you will also judge him correctly.
As Aeschines referred to Antipater’s emissaries, his eyes flicked toward the spectator’s gallery. Swallow could easily pick the Macedonians out of the crowd: they were the beardless ones, real Alexander-style buzzcuts, with the expressions of mulish superiority on their rustic faces. Doubtless they were thinking there would be no reason for such cumbersome litigation in Pella. Just a secret order passed to an underling, and thence to some eager, doe-eyed thugs from the hinterlands. They did things differently there.
The first charge I will address is of Machon’s impiety. I am certain you recall the resolution of the Assembly not long ago, in response to a message from Alexander requesting divine honors. I am also told-for I was not there-that debate on this measure was as non-contested as any ever put before that body. Even Demosthenes supported it, albeit with his usual contempt for men of quality, saying “Let Alexander be Zeus’s boy. And Poseidon’s too, for good measure.” The measure passed by simple acclamation. Read the resolution, please.
The timekeeper stopped the clock, and the clerk read the city’s conferral of divine honors on Alexander. Swallow well remembered the day that resolution passed. Indeed, it was not contested, though not due to any particular love for Alexander, whom city democrats had taken to calling “the Boy.” Many of them had spent the last decade hoping with every fiber of their being that he go down in defeat in Persia. Clouds of birds and herds of sheep and goats were sacrificed to enlist the gods on behalf of the Persian king, Darius. Faced with the Boy’s demand for godhood, with the army of his lackey Antipater poised, as it was that very day, to enforce his adolescent whims, there seemed to be little choice but to indulge him. As it was, most members of the Assembly considered the request something of a joke-a cry for respect Alexander couldn’t earn from the Greeks with a thousand victories. Swallow did not oppose it.
As I have said, I was not in the city when this measure passed. I cannot speak to whether the motives behind its approval were sincere, or cynical. I can only say that by any measure, whether in glory under arms, or in patronage of the arts, or by that basic virtue of character to which all men should orient like sailors to the pole star, Alexander deserved such honors. Athenians, do we not owe our very city to his magnanimity? Twice the Macedonians could have laid waste to Athens-first, after Chaeronea, when the disaster I long warned of finally came to pass (and Demosthenes, incidentally, was high-tailing it from the battlefield). Recall that Philip could have continued south and exacted our annihilation. But instead of invasion, we received our prisoners back without claim of ransom, and the ashes of our fallen soldiers. Prince Alexander himself came to us as an emissary of peace. The second time was after Philip was assassinated, and some in the Assembly argued the time was ripe to throw off the Macedonian “yoke,” though to my limited knowledge of husbandry, no “yoke” has ever worn so lightly as the one Philip fashioned for us. To be sure, it is our intemperance for action that marks us as deeply as our democracy; as Herodotus wrote, it is easier to incite 30,000 Athenians to war than a single Spartan. Thus it has been, and thus it probably shall always be.
Alexander, no longer Prince but King, appeared in Boeotia with his army, and besieged Thebes. As is all too typical of reprobates and cowards, the nerve of the anti-Macedonian rabble broke in the face of determined force. Thebes was destroyed-it cannot be denied. But Alexander shared his father’s distaste for vengeance against Athens. He invaded Persia instead, and upon his subjugation of that kingdom he returned to us the figures of the Tyrannicides stolen by Xerxes. Many of you passed those statues on your way to this chamber this morning, though I wonder how many of you paused to consider to whom we owe such relics of our patrimony. Did Alexander deserve divinity? For Athens’ sake, who deserved it more?
I remember Alexander’s embassy after Chaeronea. Though I had meet the Prince before, as a boy in his father’s court in Pella, that occasion did not prepare me for the full splendor of his person. At eighteen years old, his beauty made slaves of men and women. His hair was fair and bright like the mane of a lion, sweeping up and back from his fine brow. Though he was short of stature, his spirit towered over every man in the room, not least over the political hacks sent to greet him, including, as it happened, Machon. Nor was this all that was leonine about the Prince. When he laughed, as he did freely, he showed a set of sharp teeth, like that of a young lion.
In Alexander’s eyes was the real gleam of genius. I particularly recall their different colors, blue on the right, black on the left. The meaning of this feature was never obvious, but seemed to promise a unique destiny, which
