states dared to insist on our ancient rights.
Now, when the men of Thebes bested us that time, our leaders signed their treaty, accepted their laws and accepted the federation, the way a poor man accepts a bad sausage in the market when he dares not haggle. But the treaty said nothing about the Daidala. And Plataea's turn was coming – her first turn to celebrate the festival in nigh on fifty years.
For a year after the battle, men said little about it. But then the Plataean Daidala was just a few years away – and towns worked for years to make the festival great. So it was that not long after the priest came to our house – this is how I remember it – and the forge fire was relit, men started to come back to the forge. First they came to have their pots mended, and their ploughs straightened, but soon enough they came to talk. As the weather changed, and Pater worked outside, men would come as soon as their farm work was done – or before – and they would sit on Pater's forging stumps, or recline against the cow's fence or her shed. They would bring their own wine and pour it for each other or for Pater, and they would talk.
I was a boy, and I loved to hear men talk. These were plain men, not lords – but not fools, either. Even here in this house I hear the life of the rustic made a thing of fun. Perhaps. Perhaps there are boors who think more of the price of an ass than of a beautiful statue. What of it? How many of these philosophers could plough a straight furrow, eh, girl? There is room in the world for many kinds of wisdom – that was the revelation of my life, and you should write it down.
Hah! It is good to be lord.
At any rate, by the end of the day we'd have the potter, Karpos, son of Phoibos, the wheelwright, Draco, son of Draco, the leather worker, Theron, son of Xenon, some of their slaves and a dozen farmers in the yard. And they would debate everything from the immortality of the gods to the price of wheat at the market in Thebes – and Corinth, and Athens.
Athens. How often in this story will I mention her? Not my city, but crowned in beauty and strong, in a way Plataea could never be strong – yet capricious and sometimes cruel, like a maiden. As you will be, soon enough, my dear. Athens is now the greatest city in the world – but then she was just another polis, and outside of Attica, men paid her little heed.
Yet she was starting to learn her power. I must weary you with some history. Athens had been under a tyranny for forty years – the Pisistratidae. Some say that the tyrants were good for Athens, and some say they were bad. I have friends of both groups, and I suspect the truth was that the tyrants were good in some ways and bad in others.
While the tyrants were lording it over Athens, the world was changing. First, Sparta rose to power, initially by crushing the cities nearest to her, and then by forcing the rest of their neighbours into a set of treaties that compelled them to serve Sparta. Now, in the Peloponnese – everywhere else, too – only men of property fought in the battles. Slaves might throw rocks, and poor farmers might throw a javelin, but the warriors were aristocrats and their friends.
Armies were small, because there are, thank the gods, only so many aristocrats in the world. But when Sparta created her 'League', she changed the world. Suddenly the Peloponnese could field a bigger army than anyone else. Spartans are great warriors – just ask them – but what made them dangerous was their size. Sparta could put ten thousand men in the field.
The other states had to respond. Thebes formed her own league, the Federation of Boeotia, but other states had to find another way to provide that manpower. In Plataea, we took to arming every free man. Even so, we could never, as I have said, muster more than fifteen hundred armed men.
In Athens, the tyrants kept their armies small. They did not permit men to carry arms abroad, and when they had to fight, they hired mercenaries from Thessaly and Scythia. They didn't trust their people.
Don't fool yourself, honey. We're tyrants, too.
At any rate, while I was a boy, the Pisistratidae fell. The survivors ran off to the Great King of Persia and Athens became a democracy. Suddenly, in a day, Athens had the manpower to field a big army – ten thousand hoplites or more. The Athens of my boyhood was like a boy who has just developed his first muscles.
You've stayed awake through my history lesson – that fellow who is courting you must be having his effect. The point is – there is a point, honey – that for the first time, Athens was feeling strong, and she was suddenly open as a market for the Plataeans, just over the mountains and guarding the pass to Thebes. Some of the richer farmers had learned that if they carted their olive oil and grain and wine over the mountain to Athens, they fetched a much better price than they got in the market of little Plataea – or in the market of mighty Thebes.
I longed to go to Athens. I dreamed of it. I had heard that the whole city was built of Parian marble. Lies, of course, but you have dreams of your own – you know what dreams are like. And we heard that the Alcmaeonidae were building the new Temple of Apollo at Delphi of marble – it had never been done before – and it was a marvel. Draco the wheelwright, as close to a good friend as Pater had, went on a pilgrimage to Delphi and came back singing of the new temple.
Bah, give me that wine cup and never mind an old man's digressions. Anyway, the talk that summer was of the Daidala and the price of grain.
Epictetus was the richest of the local farmers. He'd been born a slave and made all his wealth from his own sweat, and he might have been old Hesiod reborn. A hard man to cross. But he'd just made the trip to Athens the year before and he swore by it. I remember the day that he pulled up with a wagon full of hired hands.
'This is the party?' he said. He had a grim, deep voice.
'No party here,' Pater said. He was making a cauldron, a deep one, and the anvil sang with every stroke as he bent the bronze to his will. 'Just a bunch of loafers avoiding their work!'
There were twenty men around the forge yard, and they all laughed. It was mid-afternoon, and there wasn't a lazy man there. They had a skin of last year's wine, the good purple stuff that our grapes make at home, dark as Tyrian dye.
Epictetus got off his wagon and his hired men climbed down. It was a high wagon – Draco's best work, the kind that would carry five farms' worth of grain. He had a grown son – Epictetus son of Epictetus – who was a shadow beside his hard-working father.
'Bring our wine, son,' the father said, and then he walked into the yard.
It was quite the event, because Epictetus never came to loaf in the forge yard. He said that a man had but one life, and any time he wasted counted against him with the gods. He was the only farmer in Boeotia who owned four ploughs. He only needed two, but he built the other two – just in case. He was that sort of man.
So he came into the yard and Pater sent me for a stool from the kitchen. It was like one lord visiting another. I fetched a stool, and Epictetus – the son – poured wine from a heavy amphora for every man in the yard. I had a taste of Pater's. It was not cheap.
Epictetus looked around. 'I've picked the right day,' he said. He nodded. 'I have a thought in my head and I can't get it out. I wanted to talk to the men – the real men – without giving myself away to the Theban bastards in town.'
Pater handed Bion the new cauldron. 'Punch her for rivets,' he said. 'Did you pour me a new plate?'
Bion nodded. He was better at casting bronze even than Pater. 'Smooth as a baby,' he said.
'He'll be a rival to you when you free him,' Draco said.
'No,' Pater said. He pulled his leather apron off and tossed it to another slave. Then he poured some water over his head, wiped his face with a rag and walked back. 'It is good to see you in my yard, and a guest is always a blessing,' Pater said, and poured a libation. 'I always have time to listen to you, Epictetus.'
Epictetus bowed. He rose, as if speaking in the assembly. And in a way he was, for in the yard were the leaders of what might have been called the 'middling' sort – the men who supported the temples and shrines, who served in war. There were some aristocrats, and two very rich men, but the men in our yard were – well, they were the voice of the farmers, if you like.
'Men,' he said. How imposing he was! Tall, strong and burned so dark that he looked like mahogany. Even at fifty, he was someone to be reckoned with. 'Men of Plataea,' he began again, and suddenly I knew that he was nervous. That made me nervous, too. Such a strong man? And rich?
'Last year I went to Athens,' he said. 'You know that Athens has overthrown the tyrants. They are gone – fled to the Great King in Persia, or dead.' He paused and smiled a little. 'But you know all this, eh? I'm a windbag. Listen. Athens has money – their silver owls are the best coin in Hellas. And they have an army – they muster ten thousand hoplites when they go to war.' He looked around, took a sip of wine. 'They have so many mouths to feed
