“I used to be headman of my village, up to the northwest of Macedon.” Pythax sat back so that he leaned against the damp wall, and he turned his head to look at me as he spoke. “It wasn’t anything special, just the usual huts, we had pigs, goats, a few sheep, a cow. The men would raid the neighboring villages, they’d raid us back. There was always a border dispute. I was the biggest man and the toughest fighter, so I was in charge. My father had been headman before me. I settled the disputes between the families before they came to blows, encouraged the odd raid to keep the men’s spirits satisfied, and had nothing else to do but hunt, scratch my ass, and watch the women and kids tend the animals. It was a good life.
“Sometimes we’d see armies come close, but I kept the men well clear of them. Even the toughest dog hides when there’s a lion about.
“Then the Persians came. There wasn’t no hiding from them. You never saw such a river of men! But locusts was more like it when it came to victuals. They stole everything in their path. We slaughtered the cow and salted the meat and buried it. We set the pigs free, figuring we could catch them later. Then I took the people and the remaining animals, and hid up in the mountains where only the goats could follow us.
“Only it turned out some of those Persians had goats for mothers. They knew we had food and they climbed after us. They’d already reaped our fields for the corn. They found where we’d hid the meat, the bastards. I guess they did it by looking for fresh-dug dirt. Now they wanted the sheep and the goats.
“I couldn’t let them have it. We were already facing a tough winter, and if we lost the last animals we wouldn’t have enough to feed everyone, we’d starve for sure. What we do then is, we boil a large pot of hemlock, and the old men and women, and the mothers with grown children and the small children and the girls all drink it, and then the rest of us have a chance of making it through to start afresh. We’d had to do that once when I was a boy, when the crops failed and some disease killed a lot of the animals. I don’t remember much about it but I remember my ma holding me and crying, and then walking away, and that was the last I ever saw her.
“I didn’t want to do that. My woman had been with me many years, and she’d even survived having four kids, and three of them were still alive, a boy and two girls. If we had to brew the hemlock they’d all be gone but for my son.
“So I took the strongest men, and told the rest to go high, really high, so high I knew the old ones and maybe a few of the kids wouldn’t make it back, and then I took our best men and staked out a position where I knew the Persians had to come, ’cause it was the only good route up.
“We took the first few easily. We were above them and they were easy meat when they reached up. After that, they learned. Two of them were shooting arrows at us, not so much to hit us as to pin us in position. We threw rocks back. I hit one of the bastards and he rolled down the mountain. Didn’t do any good though, because those bastards did find another way up. I’ll never know how they did it, they must have climbed a vertical cliff face. Next thing we know, we’ve got Persians above us and below us. I shouted at my son to retreat to our people and take command there-we were going to die, you see-and he shouted something back I didn’t hear, and then the man beside me goes down with a spear in his throat and I think a rock must have knocked me on the head, ’cause the next thing I know I wake up bruised and cut with my arms numb ’cause of how they tied them behind my back, and I’m told now I’m a slave of the Persian King.
“Well, you know how the war went. When the Persians were beaten at Plataea there was a lot of confusion. I managed to escape the chains and wrung the neck of our guard, then I made off. I was picked up later by an Athenian patrol and they brought me back here.
“I was happy enough at first. They made me a member of the Scythian Guard, and that seemed good enough for me, seeing as I figured my village and my woman and my children must all be dead. I rose in the Guard, I was good at it, and the man who was chief told me when he retired he reckoned I’d be the man to take over. But I was homesick, you see. Before I did that I had to know what had happened. So I walked through those Dipylon Gates, just like you said.
“There was a village there, same place it used to be, but when I walked in I didn’t recognize but one or two of the men, and none of them knew me at all. Then my son comes out of the largest hut and stands before me. He knew me, all right. He says, ‘Father…’ and then stops like he ran into a wall. So I asked where was my woman, and what had happened to his sisters, and he says, ‘The Persians took all the animals, there wasn’t anything we could do.’
“That’s when I realized I couldn’t hear any kids crying, and the only women in the fields were young.
“I took a long look at my son, standing there like I would have when I was his age. I knew I could take him. He knew it too. But he stood his ground, and he was proud. So I turned and walked away. I walked all the way back to Athens. I didn’t want to kill my son, you see.”
Pythax shrugged. “Besides, I like it here. I learned to speak Greek like they speak it in Athens. And I like those plays, not the sad ones, the ones that make a man laugh. And here I have a whole city to look after ’stead of a small village.”
There wasn’t much I could say after a story like that, so I kept silent while Pythax drank. I thought, compared to him, my life had been shallow.
He handed me the wineskin, now only a quarter full.
“Problem is, little boy, who am I working for, really? Am I looking after Athens, or the people who live in Athens?”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it ain’t,” he said earnestly. “Listen, if I’m looking out for the city, then who tells me what the city needs?”
“Er, the government?”
“Right. And who’s the government?”
“Well, the Ecclesia decides what will be done.”
“But you know what? Not one of those common citizens has ever given me an order, and if they did I wouldn’t be supposed to take it.”
“All right then, the Council of the Areopagus. Aren’t the Scythians supposed to protect them in time of riot? That’s why your barracks is on the side of the rock.”
“Yeah, that’s right, but none of them are the government, are they? They used to be archons, but they aren’t anymore. And then Ephialtes took away their powers, so they got nothing to do now but scratch their asses and find idiots like you guilty of murder. Doesn’t sound like no government to me.”
“Okay then, the archons.”
“Yeah, the archons. But they get chosen by a sort of gambling, and Zeus, boy, you should see some of the idiots we get. Give me back that wine.” He drained the remainder of the skin and crushed it to get the last drops.
“You know about these things, boy. You reckon there’s going to be a break between the Ecclesia and the Areopagus?”
“I don’t know, Pythax. If we don’t tell the people a story they can believe about what happened to Ephialtes, the riots are going to get worse.”
Pythax nodded. “There was another riot today. We squashed it. But that’s the problem, boy, about who I’m working for. Am I supposed to defend the Council, or should I tell my men to join the people of Athens, who happen to be the ones tearing apart the city in fear of what the Council might do?”
“When you put it like that, I understand your problem much better, Pythax.” I thought for a moment. “I think it’s like when the Persians attacked your village. Sometimes you have to do things that will be bad now, but are the right thing to do for the future. Only it’s not the archons or the Council that has to decide what’s right. It’s you.”
Pythax stood, remarkably steady on his feet.
“I’m not sure how it is, little boy, but somehow you remind me of me.”
As soon as Pythax left I lay back on the cot and stared up at the rock ceiling. I found myself wondering how they would they do it, if they were going to…kill me. What it would feel like to die was beyond my imagination. I knew there were different ways of executing criminals, depending on the crime. The death of Brasidas was serious, but not of course as serious as the death of Ephialtes, who was a citizen. The slaves amounted to little more than destruction of public property. So it was the death of Ephialtes that would determine the manner of my own death.
Probably I’d be taken to the execution ground outside the Dipylon Gates, along the northern road to Piraeus,
