“May the gods protect us from the fury of the Macedonians!” Soon the bailiff’s truncheons were swinging, men were hitting the floor, and two citizens dueled with knives. It took some time before order was restored.
Swallow was silent throughout the riot. In fact, this was only the second most even tally he had seen in his time. Machon was acquitted by a margin of two. Five years earlier Swallow participated in a corruption trial that ended 251 to 250, with the tiebreaking vote for conviction cast by the archon.
“Whatever we do, we must talk to that shepherd!” he told Deuteros.
“On the matter of the second charge of impiety,” Polycleitus announced at last, “the jury finds the defendant not guilty. The votes are 309 to 191. Clerk, release the jurors.”
The five hundred poured out in the alley in front of the courthouse. The jurors were each clutching their jury- pay-seven newly-minted obols-in their hands. Despite the lateness of the hour, a number of vendors on the agora stayed open for business. A man went around selling fresh water from a spigotted skin on his back. Another hawked flatbread from an oily sack, while a handful of women of various ages haunted the half-shadows around the crowd, murmuring to whomever was nearby.
Some of the jurors went off right away to taverns specializing in the law court trade. The rest surrounded the bewildered Machon, pounding him on the shoulders, pumping his hand, begging to drink with him.
“Tell us, were those your own words?” someone asked.
“Did Demosthenes write the speech?”
“Demosthenes,” Machon replied, “would not have been so inept.”
“Has anybody seen Aeschines?”
“Gone through the back door, I’d think! With his reputation, after so many trials, to be so thoroughly beaten by an amateur…”
Searching the mob, Swallow caught sight of the shepherd. Someone had left his lamb tied to a stake outside the courthouse; the man had already spent some of his pay on water for the sick thing. Swallow poked the man with his walking stick as the lamb lapped the water from his cupped palms.
“Friend, tell us-did you hear anything of the case?”
“Can’t see it’s any business of yours, friend.”
Swallow tossed an obol on the ground. The other looked at the coin, gathered it under himself with his foot.
“In case you didn’t see, I was…out… the entire day.”
“So how did you vote?”
Silence. Swallow showed him another coin.
“Are you sure you want to pay him again?” asked Deuteros.
“There’s another case to be tried tomorrow…and the day after that. For now I must know his answer.”
The lamb having finished its drink, the shepherd dried his hands on his ragged tunic. “I would love to take your money,” he said, “but no one explained the rules to me. I can’t remember which token I dropped. I can’t remember at all.”
XXIV
After his acquittal, Machon was seen carousing with well-wishers. Such good business followed him that the tavern stayed open until dawn. The barkeep had a pretty daughter who poured out the jugs, and kept the roast eel and pork womb coming in a way that made everyone forget the privation of the trial. Swallow and Deuteros found the party soon after it started, the former buying the jurors several rounds of Thasian black from some seemingly inexhaustible source of silver.
“So where do you keep all that cash, Swallow, that you can treat us all so generously?”
“You don’t want to know where he keeps his money,” warned Deuteros.
“From the fact that you are here,” asked another juror, “may we suppose that you were in accord with the final verdict?”
Swallow smiled. “If you knew me personally, my friend, you would not suppose that at all! But in this case, you are right-I had something to do with the happiness of this occasion.”
“But did you have a verdict in mind when you came into the courtroom-or was it something Machon said that convinced you?”
Again, Swallow found himself obliged to make some meaning of what they had heard that day. This time, however, the defendant himself was among those staring at him. Confronted with the question of what verdict he originally favored, he glanced to Deuteros, who was engrossed in skimming the sediment from his wine to the edge of his cup.
“I will not lie to you-knowing the nature of the charges, and the stakes of the trial, Deuteros and I came to court today intending to vote ‘guilty.’ In this we had only in mind the necessity of giving the Macedonians no excuse to attack the city. Of the wisdom of this view, we shall all learn in the near future. In any case, the credit for forcing me to look more deeply into the questions at hand, into the problem Alexander presented to us all, belongs to Machon alone. It was nothing in particular that he said. Instead, he convinced me that the fate of men like him and the fate of the city are not distinguishable. Athens is men like Machon.”
Drinks were raised all around, and murmurs made in solemn agreement. Machon’s cup stayed up longer than anyone’s, though, as he stared into the fleshy crevices that contained the eyes of Swallow. The latter, feeling some modesty was in order, then took to emulating Deuteros’s fascination with the debris in his wine.
“But what of Alexander himself? Now that you have heard what Aeschines has said, and then Machon, which do you think better captured the truth of the man?”
Swallow frowned. “If I foolishly professed to know the answer to that question, I would scarcely deserve the puzzling interest you all share in my view!”
“Oh, come now!” groaned the juror. “Though we know you only in the courtroom, that you have an opinion about everything is public knowledge.”
“Fair enough. If you want to hear me say something of him, though it can only be part of the truth, and something of a truism, here it is: in times such as these, when everything seems diminished, the Greeks yearn for the straightforward heroism of Achilles. To his credit, Alexander tried to fulfill this need. But not even Achilles could provide himself with a worthy enemy to overcome and seal his fame. That, instead, was a gift of Fortune. Alexander was not so lucky. He was forced to march through half the world to find his Hector. This foolish lionizing of Darius, of Porus, of dead competitors like Cyrus and Xerxes, is evidence of his failure. If events had not intervened, he’d still be looking today, I wager.”
At this, no one raised a cup, and Machon kept his eyes on the table. This response, far more than their eager agreement, compelled Swallow to go on.
“But if you want to hear something I do know for certain,” he said, “understand this: the Macedonians will never accept a court verdict with which they so strongly disagree. It is not in their experience.”
Swallow directed this warning at Machon. The latter, however, made no other response but to lead his entourage through the rest of the Chian wines, and then the Lesbian. They had moved on to a local vintage when someone began to sing the paean the soldiers gave before Chaeronea. At this, Machon’s eyes filled with tears, and he joined in the singing three times over until his voice gave out, worn down after his day of speechifying. The singing done, the party smashed their drinking cups against the wall. The tavern keep smiled, added the cost of the cups to their bill, and ordered up another amphora from the basement.
Idling outside were the two Macedonians who had watched the trial from the spectator’s gallery. Another man was with them but stayed in the shadows. As gray light filled the eastern sky, they looked up to the Acropolis to see the night lamps snuffed out on the Propylaea. When the drinkers staggered out of the tavern at last, they lofted borrowed torches above their heads. The Macedonians stayed out of sight as they pointed out the figure of Machon to their hatchet-faced companion. He nodded, then stayed behind as the Macedonians disappeared into the warren of the Kerameikos.
Decent lodging houses were not common in the center of Athens. There was one good place near the law courts, run by a Corinthian metic. It was beyond the west end of the Painted Stoa, just a little way toward the Dipylon gate. A man of Machon’s importance would only be found there.
