the priest.
It had a flat base – a hard thing to keep when you round a cup, let me tell you – with sloping sides and a neatly rolled rim. He'd riveted a handle on, simple work, but done cleanly and precisely. He'd made the rivets out of silver and the handle itself of copper. And he'd raised a scene into the cup itself, so that you could see Hephaestus being led to Olympus by Dionysus and Heracles, when his father Zeus takes him back. Dionysus was tall and strong in a linen chiton, and every fold was hammered in the bronze. Heracles had a lion skin that Pater had engraved so that it looked like fur, and the smith god was a little drunk on the happiness of his father's taking him back.
The priest turned it this way and that, and then he shook his head. 'This is king's work,' he said. 'Thieves would kill me in the road for a cup like this.'
'Yours,' Pater said.
The priest nodded. 'Your gifts are unimpaired, it seems,' he said. The cup was its own testimony. I remember the awe I felt, looking at it.
'Untouched by the rage of Ares,' Pater said, 'I owe more than that cup, priest. But that's what I can tithe now.'
The priest was visibly awed. I was a boy, and I could see his awe, just as surely as I had seen Simon's fear and rage. It made me wonder, in a whole new way, who my father was.
Pater summoned Bion, and Bion poured wine – cheap wine, for that's all we had – into the new cup. First the priest prayed to the smith god and poured a libation, and then he drank, and then Pater drank, and then Bion drank. Then they gave me the cup, and I drank.
'Your boy here has a gift too,' the priest said, while the wine warmed our bellies.
'He's quick,' Pater said, and ruffled my hair.
First I'd heard of it.
'More than quick,' the priest said. He drank, looked at the cup and held it out to Bion, who filled it. He started to pass it back and Pater waved at him.
'All servants of the smith here, Bion,' he said.
So Bion drank again. And let me tell you, when the hard times came and Bion stayed loyal, it was for that reason – Pater was fair. Fair and straight, and slaves know. Something for you to remember when you're tempted to a little temper tantrum, eh, little lady? Hair in your food and piss in your wine when you mistreat them. Right?
Anyway, we drank a while longer. It went to my head. The priest asked Pater to think about moving to Thebes – said Pater would make a fortune doing work like this in a real city. Pater just shrugged. The joy of making was washing away in the wine.
'If I wanted to be a Theban,' he said, 'I'd have gone there when I was young.' He made the word Theban sound dirty, but the priest took no offence.
And then the priest turned back to me.
'That boy needs to learn his letters,' he said.
Pater nodded. 'Good thing for a smith to know,' he agreed.
My heart soared. I wanted nothing – nothing – more than to be a smith.
'I could take him to school,' the priest said.
Pater shook his head. 'You're a good priest,' Pater said, 'but my boy won't be a pais in Thebes.'
Again the priest took no offence. 'You won't teach the boy yourself, ' he said. No question to it.
Pater looked at me, nodded, agreeing. 'No,' he said. 'It's my curse – I've no time for them. Teaching takes too long and I grow angry.' He shrugged.
The priest nodded. 'There's a hero's tomb with a priest up the mountain,' he said.
'Leitos,' Pater said. 'He went to Troy. Calchas is the priest. A drunk, but a good man.'
'He can write?' the priest asked.
Pater nodded. The next morning, I rose with the sun to see the priest go. I held his hand in the courtyard while he thanked the god and Pater for his cup, and Pater was happy. He reminded Pater that I was to learn to write, and Pater swore an oath unasked, and the thing was done. I wasn't sure what I thought about it, but that was Pater's way – a thing worth doing was done.
The priest went to the gate and blessed Bion. Pater took his hand and was blessed in turn. 'May I have your name, priest?' he asked. Back then, men didn't always share their names.
The priest smiled. 'I'm Empedocles,' he said.
He and Pater shook hands the initiates' way. And then the priest came to me. 'You will be a philosopher,' he said.
He was dead wrong, but it was a nice thing to hear at the age of six or seven, or whatever I was.
'What's your name?' he asked.
'Arimnestos,' I answered.
2
It must seem strange to you, sitting in Heraklea, where we rule Propontis as far as the wild tribes, that in Boeotia two towns a day's walk apart could be inveterate enemies. It's true – we told the same jokes and we worshipped the same gods, and we all read Homer and Hesiod, praised the same athletes and cursed the same way – but Thebes and Plataea were never friends. They were big, dandified, and they thrust their big noses in where we didn't want them. They had a 'federation', which was a fancy way of saying that they would run everything and the old ways could go to Tartarus, and all the small poleis could just obey.
So I was five, or perhaps six, when Pater went away and came back wounded, and the men of Thebes had the best of it. They didn't harry our orchards or burn our crops, but we submitted and they forced little Plataea to accept their laws.
And there it might have remained, if it hadn't been for the Daidala.
You think you know all about the Daidala, my dear – because I am master here, and I make the peasants celebrate the festival of my youth. But listen, thugater – it was on the slopes of Cithaeron that Zeus first feared to lose the love of his wife, Hera. She left him, for he is a bad husband, and he cheated on her – and you must tell me, should your husband ever forsake your bed. I'll see to it that he returns, or he'll wear his guts for a zone.
At any rate, she left him, and when she was gone, as is the way with men, he missed her. So he asked her back. But when you are a god, and the father of gods – aye, or when you are merely a mortal man and full of your own importance – it is hard to ask forgiveness, and harder still to be refused.
So Zeus went into Boeotia, and in those days there were kings. He found the king – a Plataean, of course – and asked him for advice.
The king thought about it for a day. If he had any sense, he asked his own wife. Then he went back to mighty-thewed Zeus, and he no doubt shrugged at the irony of it all. And he said, 'Mighty Zeus, first among gods and men, you can win back beautiful cow-eyed Hera if you make her jealous, by making her think that you intend to replace her for ever.' So he proposed that they make a wooden statue of a beautiful kore, a maiden in a wedding gown. And that they take it to the sacred precincts on the mountain, and imitate the manner of men and women going to a wedding.
'Hera will come in all her glory to destroy her usurper,' the king said. 'And when she sees that it's nothing but a billet of wood, she'll be moved to laughter. And then you'll be reconciled.'
Perhaps Zeus thought it was the silliest plan he'd ever heard, but he was desperate. To an old man like me, it seems a deeply cynical plan. But for all that, it worked. The wedding procession wound up the hillside, and Hera came and destroyed the statue with her powers. Then she saw that she had merely burned a piece of wood, and she laughed, and she and Zeus were reconciled, and celebrated their eternal marriage again.
So every town in Boeotia used to take turns to celebrate the Daidala – forty-eight towns, and in the forty- ninth year, the Great Daidala, when the fires burned like the beacons burned when the Medes came. And they would compete to celebrate with the best festival, the largest fire, the finest ornaments on the dresses, the most beautiful kore. But as Thebes's federation gained power, so Thebes took over the festivals. They would allow no rival, and the Daidala was celebrated only by Thebes – and little Thespiae and our Plataea. Only our two little
