There were some good times.
I asked Phrynichus later if he had bedded her, and he looked at me as if I was a child and told me that grown men do not kiss and tell, which shows you that I still had a great deal to learn.
Another night, Phrynichus debated with Philocrates about the gods. Philocrates dared us to consider a world where there were no gods, and he suggested — through good argument and some sly inversion — that such a world would bear a remarkable resemblance to our own. Then Phrynichus rose and proposed that we consider a world where the gods did not believe in Philocrates. His satire was brilliant and so funny that I can’t remember a word of it, except that I threw up from too much wine and laughing so hard.
Phrynichus drank when he wasn’t using his head, and he and Philocrates and Idomeneus formed a drinking club whose members had to swear to be drunk every day as an offering to Dionysus. I tried to make fun of Philocrates for this display of piety, but he refused to be mocked — saying that Dionysus was the one god whose effects were palpable.
Just after the local feast of Hera, our navarch bestirred himself from his tent and ordered us to sea, to seize the island of Lade before the Persian fleet arrived. By now we received daily reports from merchant ships and outlying galleys — and the Lesbians had a dozen fast biremes and a pair of light sailing hemioliai on hand, and they did what scouting got done.
So on the morning after the feast of Hera, we rose, manned our ships — a scene of complete chaos, let me tell you — and sailed in a surprisingly orderly manner down the coast of Samos to Lade — the enemy squadron, led by Archilogos, slipping away ahead of us. We had so many ships that we filled the island. The Samians landed first, and they took all the good ground, so that by the time the Lesbians and Chians had landed, we, the extreme right of the line and the last in sailing order, were left with the rocks near the fort and nowhere else to camp.
I was leading Miltiades’ ships and Nearchos’s squadron, and I directed them to follow me to the beach opposite the island — the beach from which I’d launched my raid a year before. We were not sorry to be separated by half a stade of water from the excesses of Dionysius and the growing tensions of the camp.
Later, Aristides was listening to Phrynichus recite the
‘We need to get to grips with the Medes before the fleet collapses,’ he said. ‘The Samians have refused to train any more. They’ve mutinied, and the Lesbians are just as bad.’
That night, Epaphroditos and a few of his warriors swam over to us, drank wine and complained of how mad our navarch had become.
‘We’re not pirates,’ Epaphroditos said. ‘The man’s notions of training are insane.’
Secretly, I suspected that all the Ionians could have used harder hands and stronger backs. But they were brave, and as far as I could see, this was one fight that would be settled through courage, not tactics.
‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘I hear the Persians are on the way. We need a rest.’
I talked with him half the night, and Phrynichus listened to every word he said as if he were Hector returned.
Dionysius declared that we should have games to propitiate the gods in preparation for the contest against the Persians. It was the most popular decision he’d made since he ordered us to Lade. Men were bored, restless and yet listless. I felt that the Ionians were dangerously lazy. We were on the edge of victory, and they wanted to behave like men who had already won.
The prospect of games didn’t excite me the way it had when I was younger. It makes me laugh now, to think that at twenty-three or twenty-four I imagined myself a hardened old man.
I had already triumphed in a set of military games, you’ll recall, back on Chios when the revolt was young. Five years before. So I decided not to compete in every event, or to strive to win the whole competition. But events decided otherwise.
Next morning, Phrynichus said that he wanted to see Miletus before we fought. I had business there, so I collected a heavy bag and a letter for Teucer and we walked across the mudflats into the city, slipping past the Persian archers in the last gloom of morning to have a cup of wine with Istes. He depressed me by showing me the siege mound, now all but level with the height of the wall. ‘Twenty days,’ he said.
‘Care to come with us?’ I asked, and Istes shook his head.
‘My place is here, with my brother,’ he said. ‘We will die here.’
‘Cheer up!’ I insisted. ‘Apollo will not let us fail.’ I could see the future so clearly that I was surprised other men worried so much. ‘We will destroy their fleet, and then we will liberate all of Asia.’
Istes had lines around his eyes that were not there a year ago, and pouches from sleepless nights. He looked twenty years older than me. And he drank constantly.
I glanced at Phrynichus. ‘This is the greatest swordsman in the Greek world,’ I said.
Istes grinned. ‘Someday, perhaps we can measure each other,’ he said. I agreed — it would be good to face such a gifted man. That is the admiration by competition that makes Greece great. ‘But I would rather stand beside you as we smite the Persians.’
‘Flattery will get you anywhere, Plataean,’ he said. ‘You think we’ll win this naval battle?’
‘I do,’ I said. We would win, I would take Briseis as my war bride and that would be that. My spear-won wealth would make a palace for her on my farm. That’s what I had decided — to have her and punish her as well.
Feel free to laugh.
‘I have to say that I’ve now fought the Persians every fucking day for a year,’ Istes said. ‘If you destroy every ship in their fleet — kill Datis, drown their navarchs — this war still won’t be over. They’re much, much tougher than that.’ He yawned. ‘But if you lose, Miletus falls — and the revolt is
‘You are tired,’ I said.
‘You know how it feels after a fight?’ he asked me, one killer to another.
‘Of course,’ I allowed.
‘Imagine fighting every day,’ he said. ‘Every fucking day. I’ve been at it a year, and I’m starting to go mad. My brother is worse — he was never the fighter I am, and fear is getting into his gut.’
Of course, you are familiar with the character of Istes in the play. Phrynichus knew his business. He was a great man, and he knew greatness when he saw it.
I left him to study his new hero, and I went out on the walls and found Teucer. He was at the top of a tower — a rickety thing of hides and wood and stone fill, just completed behind a section of wall that had been mined from beneath. The stonework of Miletus was so old and so good that the wall simply subsided without breaking. That’s why we didn’t use mortar in those days — mortar adds strength, but when a mortared wall is undermined, it collapses. Not so heavy stones fitted by master masons. Often, the old way is the better way — something for you children to remember.
They’d built a tower behind the subsided wall, and I had to climb a dreadful ladder to reach him, far above the battle. He had a big Persian bow, and he shot carefully at the slaves who were working to clear the rubble in the not-quite breach. He seldom missed, and very little work was happening. He had another man spotting for him, too, and they passed comments on individuals as they shot them.
‘See red-scarf? He’s got a death wish — oops! Wish come true.’
‘White-belt? He’s getting ready to step out to get that fascine — here he comes. You missed left. Now he’s going to come around the other side of the wicker shield — ooh, nice. Dropped like a sack of barley.’
‘Teucer?’ I asked.
‘Oh!’ He put his bow down and embraced me. ‘A pleasure to see you, my lord.’
I sat on my haunches after an enemy arrow ruffled my chlamys. ‘Hot work here.’
Teucer laughed. ‘This is my life, these days.’
‘Care to ship out for the battle?’ I asked as casually as I could manage.
He glanced at me, shot another arrow and exchanged a long look with his spotter. ‘We can’t,’ he said, after a delay so long I thought I’d offended him.
The spotter was Kreusis, a younger archer who’d also served aboard my ship. His face was marked with soot and I hadn’t recognized him at first. ‘Sorry, lord. Histiaeus would cut our ears off. We’re to hold the Windy Tower while you sailors fight their fleet. Our lord is afraid of an escalade during the sea-fight.’
I couldn’t argue with that. It was the sort of thing I’d have tried myself.
