No one had ever called me lord in all my life. 'Stephanos, I was born a farmer in far-off Boeotia and I've been a slave for years. Just freed. No lords here, unless my master Archi comes back.'
Then he slapped my back and laughed – he laughed quite a bit, a deep, throaty laugh that made everyone else want to laugh, too. Ares, he was big! And he introduced his two friends – oar friends, the men who sat below him in his spot in his lord's ship. I don't remember their names. I know where they died, and I'll tell that part when I get to it. But they were good men, and good companions, and I'm sorry I've forgotten them. Here's a sip of wine to their shades.
I hate it when I forget names, honey. The names are all we have, and all that ever gets remembered. Now I'm a lord, and while I live, every son of a bitch in the Chersonese will fear me and know my name. But when I die – who will remember me? Who will know the name of Arimnestos?
By the ravens of Apollo, pay me no attention. Fucking maudlin old man. Too much wine. What was I saying? Aye, it was a good evening. The night I met Stephanos.
We ended up all curled together around the fire. Archi never came back that night, but there were a dozen or so of us, and one of the local girls ran off and came back with a bundle of straw – she'd been selling it all day, she said – and we lay on the straw like chicks in a nest and slept, woke and talked, and slept. Melaina was her name, I learned from hearing Stephanos chide her for sleeping next to me.
'You'll wake up with his dick in your arse,' he said, and laughed. That's what passed for a sense of humour, on Chios. They thought we all loved boys. Or pretended to think that.
I woke with the dawn. Melaina's hair smelled like fish. She snuggled her hips against me and whispered that I was not allowed to move. But I had to get up and I was embarrassed by the, mmm, projection I had grown, but she just laughed, not even awake, and told me that if I had to piss, I should piss for her, too, so she could go on sleeping.
Only when I was well away from our fire, pissing in the sand, did I realize that the games were to start in a matter of hours – perhaps less, as games always began with the sun – and I had been awake most of night. I blessed Lord Apollo that good company had kept me from drinking a foolish amount.
I went back to the fire and warmed up while I built it up. All the slaves were asleep. Then I oiled myself. Archi was nowhere to be seen. I was pretty sure Stephanos had mentioned wrestling, so I woke him.
'Are you in the games?' I asked.
'Mother fuck!' he said, or words to that effect, and rolled out of his cloak. 'You are a good man,' he said. 'Can you spare some oil? I can't run home and get back in time – the foot race is first.'
So I oiled him, and we went up the beach together. In those days, men didn't compete naked, like fools. We wore loincloths, and I had to give him my spare. Then we ran. He had long legs but no training.
We got to the crowd just in time to catch the second heat of the two-stade race. I won – not easily, but I had his measure from the run up the beach and all the other competitors were local boys who were no match for him.
You run the foot race, honey – and you, sir? Good. Easier to tell this to people who know how games go. But in those days it was all informal. The lord had put up cairns, and we started by one, turned at the other and elbows flew in the turns. If I wanted to beat a man as big as Stephanos, I needed to be well clear of him at the turn, eh? Heh, heh. Otherwise I would have kissed the sand.
Then we watched another heat, this time mostly gentlemen – hoplites, especially Athenians. They were all trained men, and they didn't even trouble to jostle each other. It was like watching a different sport. And most of them ran naked, which I found – imposing. And odd.
A final heat of local gentry, and a big youth won by knocking most of his competitors flat. Stephanos stood by my shoulder watching. As first and second in our heat, we'd be running in the final. He pointed at the winner. 'Cleisthenes,' he said. 'He's a right bastard.'
'I can tell,' I said.
Kylix came up then, and Archi. Archi shook his head. 'My own damned fault,' he said. 'Hard to be a hero in the night and morning too,' he quoted from Heraclitus, who was full of such sayings for the young.
'Archilogos, this is my new friend Stephanos,' I said, with Ephesian formality. They eyed each other as potential rivals, and I was annoyed that they couldn't be friends – but neither saw in the other what I saw in both, and they stood apart.
I sent Kylix back for my armour. I looked at Archi, but he shook his head. 'You have to be the hero today, Doru,' he said. 'The only muscles I have that are hard are in my head and my dick.'
That got a laugh from all the men. Indeed, Archi was not alone, and half the men there – more than half – were showing signs of a good night of feasting. I heard later that the man they called 'Kalos', the beautiful, the best of the Athenian athletes, was hung-over from the beginning to the end.
So we lined up in the sand for the two-stade final. I was next to the big Chian lordling, with Stephanos on my other side. Luck of the draw.
I'd watched the lordling in his first race, and I knew I'd get an elbow in the ribs off the starting line. So when Lord Pelagius dropped his arm, I shot off from a low crouch just as the trainers in Ephesus taught, bless them. Then I cut diagonally across the field.
The tall, pretty Athenian, Kalos, was on the inside and I let him lead me. From the first, we were alone. There was a roar behind me, and some shouting, but I just kept pounding up the beach, and the naked Athenian was a stride ahead.
Damn, he was fast. And he was better trained, I'd say. Hangover or not, he was the better man. And he wasn't running full out, either. He was saving himself, measuring me.
I decided on my tactics well before the turn. As we closed on the cairn, I poured it on, everything I had, and I passed him in one burst before he was on to my tactic. I was ahead of him at the cairn by a stride and I angled sharply across him so that he had to lose a stride or risk crashing into the cairn – not the most genteel manoeuvre. Illegal, in the Olympian Games. But that's youth. And then I hammered my feet on the sand, my trick done, and all there was left was to run the stade back.
There's a point in the race where it is no longer muscle and training. It's all in your head, eh? I was ahead. He would put everything into catching me, but my burst of speed must have made him wonder. And I thought – fuck it, if I can burst like that, I can run like that all the way home, if I have the guts.
So I did.
I might have been the depth of an aspis ahead of him when I crossed the line. But by Ares, I took him, and after he vomited in the sand, he came and wrapped his arms around me. 'Good run,' he said.
I grinned – I knew he was the better man. And I liked him for his good humour.
In those days, all the games counted and there was no resting. So while I was still breathing hard, Kylix brought my armour for the next race, the hoplitodromos.
That's a laugh. My armour was an old leather spolas that I bought on the beach from a mercenary, recut by a leatherworker to fit me. I had an outdated Boeotian shield that Hipponax had bought and a pair of greaves. Without them, I wouldn't have been allowed to compete in the race. On Chios, they carried an aspis and wore greaves, that was all. In Plataea, we ran in full panoply. So I snapped on my greaves, which fitted well enough, and lined up.
Lord Pelagius played no favourites, although by the time I had my armour on, I knew that the big lordling was his grandson. He could have made me run in the first heat, but he didn't, and he ran the pulls – the removal of names from a pot – fairly. He was, in fact, a good lord and a fair judge – a rarer bird than you might think, friends.
Cleisthenes and Stephanos hadn't finished the two-stade final, as they'd ended up fighting on the sand. Stephanos said that the big aristocrat tripped him, and the lordling claimed the same. But they were still in the contest. They ran in the third heat – I think the judges felt that they hadn't squandered the energy that Kalos and I had used up in the run. We ran together in the fourth heat, with another pair of Athenians and one of the Lesbian hoplites from our own ship. He ran well, too. He and Kalos and I led our pack, and Kalos was well ahead until the cairn and then he dropped back, his wine head stealing his chance for glory while the Lesbian nipped me for the victory. Epaphroditos was his name, and he couldn't believe he'd won. I worked to be as gracious as the Athenian boy had been with me. It wasn't easy. I hate to lose.
But I was still in the finals. They took place right away, and I was tired. There was quite a bit of jostling on the line, and I thought, Ares, there are four events to go, and I made the finals. I don't need to win. All I need is to finish.
