Marathon: Freedom or Death

before the performances were moved out of the Agora, everyone went — slaves and free men and citizens and even a few women — bolder spirits or prostitutes.

Athenian prostitutes aren’t like the poor tribal girls in this town, thugater. Do I shock you, blushing maiden? What I mean is that in Athens, slave and free, man and woman, prostitutes have several protections before the law and, in an odd way, status. A few are even citizens. In those days, they strolled around the agora openly, made sacrifices — at least barley-cake sacrifices — at the public altars, and performed their services to the community behind the Royal Stoa. Not that I have any direct knowledge. .

It is also important to remember that theatre performances went on all day, not in the evening, and that one play followed another in fairly short order, interspersed with prayers and sacrifice at the public altars — don’t forget that in those days, the drama was still a religious expression, and a symbol of civic piety. Men went soberly, as if to temple. When the satyr plays were introduced, to celebrate the god’s love of revelry, that was different, although still pious. An initiate of Dionysus is still pious while puking, we used to say. And worse.

I stayed with Aristides the night before. He planned to make a tour of his farms before going to the Agora, so I rose early and walked through the deserted streets with Styges by my side. Both of us were heavily armed, and I had bandages on my left arm and all down my right leg where I’d cut it leaping from roof to roof.

We walked across the Agora, past the still-empty wooden theatre and the altars of the twelve gods, right around behind the Royal Stoa. There, while girls and boys plied a brisk trade against the wall of the old building despite the early hour, I found Agios and Paramanos and Cleon.

‘Ready?’ I asked.

They all nodded. Cleon was sober. ‘Have you got Phrynichus?’ he asked.

‘I have him. Styges goes straight from here to watch him. You make sure we don’t have a surprise during the performance.’

We shook hands all around and they walked off down the hill. I stood alone, watching them go, surrounded by the urgent noises of men having a quick tumble or getting their flutes played on the day of the festival — many men thought it was good luck to couple on the wine god’s day.

Then I gathered my wits and headed back to Aristides. I made it in time to eat a crust of bread in his kitchen with his wife and two of his boarhounds, and then I borrowed a horse and accompanied him around his farms, with Aeschylus the playwright at my left side and Sophanes on my right. Aristides mocked us for nursemaiding him. For my part, I had come to enjoy his company as a philosopher, and I was afraid that by the end of the day we would no longer be friends. But I had no intention of letting him be attacked when my own plan was so close to fruition.

We had just completed a tour of grain barns — Aristides was a wealthy man, for all his pretended humility — and we were riding down a road with steep property walls on either side when I saw a group of men on foot coming the other way — a dozen men, and many with cudgels.

‘Back, my lord,’ I said, turning my horse.

‘Nonsense,’ Aristides said. ‘That’s Themistocles. No friend of mine, but hardly an enemy.’

Which shows what a foreigner I was — he was one of the best-known orators in Athens, even then. And I’d never seen him.

Themistocles was another minor aristocrat, but by dint of constant public speaking and a good deal of political strategy, he had made himself the head of the Demos party — the popular party, or the party of the lower classes. In those days, such a role was considered a threat by all the other aristocrats. The path to tyranny usually lay through the control of the masses. Only the lower-class voters could form armed mobs big enough to force the middle class into accepting a tyranny.

I think I should say at this point how I think Athens worked then. Now, to be sure, nothing I’m going to say bears any resemblance to what Solon wanted for Athens, or even what the Pisistratid tyrants wanted. This is merely my observation on what actually happened.

There was Athens — the richest city in mainland Greece. Sparta may or may not be more powerful, but no one on earth would willingly buy a Spartan pot. Eh? The poor bastards don’t even make their own armour.

All Athenians — or at least, all rich Athenians of good birth — seemed to be locked in a contest for power. An Athenian would put this differently, and prate about arete and service to the state. Hmm. Listen, children — most of them would have sold their mothers to become tyrant.

So, for those locked in the great games there were three roads to power — although each road had some side turnings and branches. A rich man might follow the path of arete, spending his money wisely on monuments at home and at Olympia or Delphi, competing in games and putting up teams of chariot horses, paying for triremes for the state, sponsoring religious festivals — all as part of a slow rise to public esteem. In this way, and by using public honours to promote his own followers, a man might build a gigantic faction that would allow him to leap to the tyranny. The Pisistratids had done it, making themselves tyrants. And the Alcmaeonids were on the same path, and Cleitus, in particular, exemplified the path of arete.

That said, I have to add that there was a deep division among the old aristocrats. On the one hand, there were the eupatridae, or well-born, descended from the gods and heroes, like the Pisistratids and the Philaids, Miltiades’ family. On the other hand, there were the new men, the new families — all still aristocrats, but ‘recently’ ennobled by wealth and political position. The first of these families were the dreaded Alcmaeonids, whose famous ancestor, Alcmaeon, was enriched in Lydia by Croesus. There were other families of ‘new men’, and while at times the new men and the old families acted together — as aristocrats — to protect wealth and privilege, at other times they were at daggers drawn.

Then again, a man like Themistocles could choose a different path. He was born to comfort, and his father, Neocles, was reckoned rich enough, but he was not well-born by any means. However, by making himself the hero of the masses, the voice of the oppressed, the hand of justice to the lower classes, Themistocles harnessed the largely unvoiced power of the disenfranchised and the under-enfranchised, and turned them into a powerful force that could, on occasion, defeat the middle class and the upper class and demand power for their chosen orator. For all that the Pisistratids were wealthy aristocrats, they had always held the love of the demos — the people. And remember, odd as it sounds, in a well-run tyranny, the poor men had the most power.

Finally, a man such as Miltiades might find a third path. Miltiades and his father were members of one of the oldest and richest of the eupatridae families, but they rose to power and wealth through overseas adventures — piracy, in fact. Through military action, sometimes in the name of Athens and sometimes in their own name, they accrued wealth by something like theft, and enriched other men who then became their followers and dependants, allowing them to attract a following in all three classes — and allowing them to build up a massive military force that neither of the other two systems ever created. If we had won at Lade, Miltiades might well have been tyrant of Athens. He’d have had the money, and the military power. That’s the real reason Cleitus hated him.

Let me add that, however cynical I am, and was, about the striving of these men for power, I will testify before the gods that Aristides, for all his priggishness, never had any end in view other than the good of Athens. His party, if you can call it that, his faction existed only to support the rule of law and prevent any of the others from rising to tyranny. So let us say that there was a fourth faction — a faction of men who followed the path of arete with no end in view but the good of their city.

Naturally, that fourth party was the smallest.

So, I had fallen into the middle of the competition, and now I was sitting on my horse, blocking the narrow lane, as Themistocles and a dozen club-armed thugs surged towards us.

‘Chairete!’ Aristides called.

Themistocles was a handsome man, tall, well-built, with broad shoulders and long legs and a full beard like a fisherman. He had a sort of bluff, hail-fellow-well-met humour that made men like him. He stepped forward, but I’d have known him anyway, as he was a head taller than his followers and the best man among them. He looked like a good man in a fight.

‘Aristides! A pleasure to meet an honest man, even if he is mounted on a horse!’ His horse comment was meant to remind his own people that he, Themistocles, was walking, not riding.

Aristides nodded. ‘I’m doing the rounds of my farms. Are you to be at the festival today?’

Themistocles leaned on his stick. ‘Love of the gods and love of the people go hand in hand, Aristides.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I see we might make common cause, as we all seem to be sporting some token from the Alcmaeonids!’ He pointed at the bump on his head and his black eye — to Aristides’ injuries, and my bandages. Then he turned to me and, with an exaggerated manner, said, ‘You must be the foreigner from Plataea, sir.’