7
I was never a great charioteer. I stood at the reins in some races on the farm, and I never won. The truth was that Hipponax had me pegged. As soon as they gave me good food, I grew so fast that I was too heavy for even a four-horse team – in a race. As a military charioteer I would have been like a god, but chariots were hardly ever used in combat any more.
Scyles was my teacher. He was an old man from Mytilene, on Lesbos, and had been a charioteer all his life. I was unsure whether he was a family retainer or a slave – he seemed part of the horse farm, as much a part of it as the old stallions and the young mares.
I will disappoint you again by saying that my slavery was so soft that I enjoyed it, and my door was never locked. Not even the first night! I could have picked up my crutch and hobbled away at any time, and a week later, when I was almost fully healed and the growth began, I could have run.
But run where, my honey? Back to Plataea across the sea? I was in mighty Ephesus in Asia, the slave of a wealthy man. No one seemed to know anything about my home, or even about the war that I'd been in. I asked – I asked Scyles from the first day. He shrugged and said that no one in the real world cared a damn what the barbarians of Athens and Sparta did. He called them bumpkins – clods.
And to be honest, honey, I wasn't really so anxious to get back to Green Plataea.
Sounds shocking, doesn't it? I was a slave and I didn't want to return to my homeland and be free. But freedom is a word we use too easily. I think now – older and wiser – I can say that I was free for the first time. I was free of my father, who was, in many ways, a cold, unfeeling bastard who seldom had any time for me. There, I've said it. I never mourned him – not really. I was proud of him. But I couldn't muster much regret that he was dead. And Mater? I wouldn't have crossed Ephesus, wouldn't have walked down the steps to the temple, to see her. So – be shocked if you like. I can remember the first night sitting on the cool marble floor of the slave quarters – the slave quarters had a marble floor, – and thinking that I must be a poor son because I didn't want to go home. I cried a little. I began to wonder if I was going to be a cold, unfeeling bastard like my father.
And I'll say it again – in Ephesus, no one had ever heard of Plataea. Among a thousand shocks I received that autumn, this had to be the greatest – that to the Greeks of Asia, mighty Athens and military Sparta were clods of no importance. Interesting, too, that this was soon to change. And that I would play my part in making it change. I dare say every man in Ephesus knows where Plataea is now.
Nonsense, I can drink wine at this hour. Wine is always good for a man. Pour it full, there's a dear.
Now – where was I? Ah, yes. Life as a slave. Not a bad life. They called me Doru – all of them, so that for a while I simply forgot my name. As soon as my thigh was healed, I had a training schedule and I was massaged and exercised by professionals. I learned to ride, and to feed horses and to keep them happy.
I never loved horses. I've known a few that were smarter than a rock, but not many. They're stubborn and stupid and not unlike cats, except that cats don't injure themselves the moment you turn your back. At any rate, after two weeks, Scyles said I would never be a charioteer, and he was right, but we kept trying.
I loved to drive. We started with a little pony cart, and I fell off a dozen times trying to make tight corners, but I was healed up by then. And we had exercises – wonderful exercises, like balancing on a board placed across the hollow of a shield, so that the face of the shield was in the dust and you could tilt and fall so easily – we'd fight that way, to practise balance. And the pony cart – I'd ride on the pole, or ride the pony, until I was comfortable anywhere in the cart or out of it. That was Scyles' way. Then we tried a two-horse chariot with real horses, and I broke my arm the first day. That took months to heal, and I spent that time doing exercises and working like a normal slave in the kitchens. Scyles ran a tight farm, and he knew his business. If I wasn't learning my new trade, I could at least run the treadmill that lifted water from the well.
It was while I was healing my arm that I discovered what stallions and mares were born knowing, if you take my meaning. One of the kitchen girls asked me how strong my spear was – all the girls laughed, even the oldsters. And that night she had me. There wasn't a great deal of foreplay, and she laughed at how quick I was – this from a girl no more than my own age. Girls can be cruel.
But we played quite a bit, and I played with other girls, too. Slave girls like to be pregnant – it makes for less work. And it makes the owner a profit, unless he's a fool. We had a rich owner and no one was threatened with being 'sold away', so the girls played. It was as much of an education as the athletic training, in its way.
The truth is, honey, it was a happy time.
There was hardship, and I was aware that I was not free. But I was young, and I had food, sex, challenge – all in all, life was simple and easy. We worked long hours. When we built a structure over the privy, we worked six straight days from dawn until dusk, but when we were finished we had done something. Other slaves ploughed, sowed and reaped, and I did some of all of that work once I was healed. We had most of the religious feasts, too. Really, in some ways I did less work than I did later as a free man.
On a farm where everyone is a slave, slavery does not seem so bad.
We did have some troubles. There was a boy I hated. He whined, he was weak, he went out of his way to avoid work and he refused to change. He also peddled tales to the overseers – who was having sex with whom, who had eaten too much, who drank the master's wine. His name was Grigas, and he was Phrygian.
And there was a Thracian boy that I liked, although slaves find it hard to be friends – real friends – because so much of that has been taken from you. But Silkes was a handsome youth, and he was a great wrestler. He'd been taken in a war, and insisted that some day he would escape. He was the first man I heard discuss escape as if it could be done.
One afternoon, we were lying in the horse barn. We'd curried all the hunters and all the chargers and chariot horses and ponies. and now we were flopped on the spare feed straw that lay heaped where Grigas had failed to make neat haystacks.
'So what if you escape?' I asked. 'Where would you go?'
'Home,' Silkes said.
'How?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'If I have to walk on water, I'll walk home.' He looked at me. 'Perhaps I'll hunt fish with my spear, and light a fire on floating weed.'
'Now you're just talking foolishness,' I said. 'If they catch you, you won't be brought back here, learning to be a charioteer. You'll end up breaking rocks, or cutting salt, or rowing. Something crappy.'
'So?' Silkes asked. 'It's all slavery. I'm not a slave. I'm a free man.' He rolled towards me. 'You're just a Greek. Slavery is natural for you.'
I broke his nose before he got me in a hold and pounded my head against the barn's wall. And yet, we were not really angry. But we both missed work because we had hurt each other, and because of it, and because Grigas reported us, we were brought before the chief overseer, Amyntas. Amyntas was a Macedonian, and he was a hard man, but fair, we all thought.
He looked us over. 'Why did you fight?' he asked.
I was ready for him. 'Over a girl,' I said. I looked sullenly at Silkes, who glared back.
'Which girl?' Amyntas asked.
'Sandra, in the kitchen.' She and I got along. I knew she wouldn't talk.
He nodded. 'I've heard that you two were discussing escape.' He looked at me. I was a Greek. I didn't flinch.
But Silkes blushed. Amyntas shrugged. 'You are a stupid Thracian. Why did you fight him?'
Silkes looked at me. 'He hit me,' he said. 'And the girl.'
He was the worst liar I'd ever met. No wonder they call Thracians 'barbarians'.
Amyntas nodded again. He had a table in the farmhouse that he used as a desk, and it was piled with scrolls. He pointed at me. 'Five blows with a riding whip,' he said. He pointed at Silkes. 'Ten blows – five for damage to your master's property, and five for attempting to incite escape. You will be punished this evening. Go to work.'
The waiting was the worst – and the humiliation. Everyone came to watch, and Grigas stood at the front, openly gloating.
I took the five blows well enough. I probably cried out, but I didn't scream or cry. Silkes took his ten in total silence.
We were whipped naked. After I took my five, Sandra handed me my chiton.
