Marathon: Freedom or Death

Clearly he knew exactly who I was.

I slid from my mount and took his hand in the Athenian way. ‘Arimnestos of Plataea at your service,’ I said.

He nodded, glanced at Aristides, then back at me, and I thought he might let go of my hand. ‘I have heard. . things about you.’ He looked at one of his men. ‘Recently.’

I smiled. ‘Nothing that might disconcert you, I hope?’

Themistocles considered me, and then looked up at Aristides. He was finding, as men have found since the invention of the horse, that it is much easier to stare a man down than to stare him up. ‘Your foreign flunky is making trouble among my people,’ he said to Aristides.

Aristides shrugged. ‘The Plataean is no man’s flunky, Themistocles. And just as he is not my flunky, so they are not your people.’

‘Don’t be a stiff-necked prig,’ Themistocles said, all the oil leaving his voice. He leaned closer. ‘Your man has tried to buy my mob. We should be acting together these days, not making separate efforts. And the mob is mine, sir.’

Aristides looked at me, and I couldn’t read what he was thinking. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You lie,’ Themistocles spat.

Aristides pushed his horse between us. ‘Themistocles, I have warned you before that utterances of this sort will not win you friends.’

‘Get your money out of town, foreigner,’ Themistocles shot at me. ‘No one buys mobs without my say-so.’ That last was directed at Aristides, not me.

I stepped towards him and his people began to close around me. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I called out. ‘And if one of you lays a hand on me, I’ll start killing you.’ I looked around at them, and they desisted. The man closest to me was a big man, but when his eyes met mine, he stepped back and gave me a smile.

I was the Arimnestos the man-killer.

Aristides looked pleased, which puzzled me.

‘I mean no disrespect,’ I said to Themistocles. I wanted no trouble with the demagogue. ‘What I have paid for will only benefit you.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he asked.

Aristides was watching me. I shrugged. ‘I would not tell every man on this road,’ I said. ‘Nor have I bought a mob. I have bought information, and I paid well.’

‘What kind of information?’ Themistocles demanded.

‘Information regarding my court case, of course,’ I said.

This satisfied him immediately. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘A certain slave in the brothels, I gather?’ he said, looking knowing and yet deeply concerned. The only sign of his hypocrisy was the speed of his direction changes.

‘Exactly!’ I proclaimed, as if stunned by his perspicacity.

He dropped me as if our business was done, then he and Aristides exchanged a commonplace or two and we passed through his retinue. When I glanced back, Themistocles was smiling at me. Aristides was not.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I smiled at him. ‘Nothing that would interest you, sir.’

He rubbed his beard. ‘You’ve got Themistocles riled, and that’s never a good thing.’ He reined his horse. ‘You know what you are doing? You’re sure?’

I shrugged, because I wasn’t at all sure that I knew what I was doing. ‘I’m fighting back,’ I said.

‘Gods stand by us,’ Aristides said.

When the sun was high, we left our horses at his stables and walked into the city together. Men were gathered everywhere, and I was reminded of Athens’s power by seeing how many men she commanded. There must have been twelve thousand men of fighting age in the Agora for the performances, and that is a fair number of decently trained men — a greater total than Thebes and Sparta together, and therein lies the secret of Athens’s strength. Manpower.

When Athenians gather, they talk. It seems to be the lifeblood of the city, and they talk of everything from the power of the gods to the roles of men, the rights of men, the place of taxes, the weather, the crops, the fish — and back to the gods. Standing with Aristides in the Agora, trying to guard him, I was dizzied by the power of the ideas expressed — piety and impiety, anger and logic, farming advice, military strategy — all in a matter of a few minutes.

We were all crushed together when the magistrates went to the public altar of Zeus near the Royal Stoa and made the opening sacrifices. Then the ‘good men’, the athletes, the Olympic victors, the poets, the priests and high aristocrats, processed to the wooden seats that had been arranged — pray, don’t imagine anything elegant or splendid like modern Athens, honey. We’re talking about wooden stands that creaked when too many fat men climbed the steps! But after some time, the crowd settled, and the poor metics and foreigners and lower-class citizens pushed in around the sides and in the space between the stage area and the stands.

Early on, I spotted Cleitus. He was wearing a magnificent embroidered himation over a long chiton of Persian work, and he was easy to pick out, as he was sitting in the first row of the stand.

A set of priests and priestesses came forward, purified the crowd and made sacrifices. Then we all sang a hymn to Dionysus together and the plays began.

I don’t remember much about the first play — just that it was a typically reverent piece about the birth and nurture of the god. At least, according to an Athenian. We have our own ideas about Great Bacchus in Boeotia. But the second play was Phrynichus’s.

I saw him as soon as the chorus came out. He was behind them, wearing a long white chiton like the one that the archon in Plataea wears, and he looked more scared than he had been when the Aegyptians were storming our deck at Lade.

I began to push through the crowd towards him. It was not easy — everyone had heard that The Fall of Miletus was a different kind of play, and men wanted to see the poet, to watch him as they watched his play. I had managed to get close to him when the chorus, dressed as skeletons in armour, linked arms and sang:

Hear me, Muses! What I tell,

Is wrought with horror, and yet heroes walked there, too!

And where our fair maidens once walked,

Fire has swept like the harrow,

Breaking the clods of dirt, and making the ground smooth.

Hear me, furies! And men of Athens!

We died on our walls, in our streets, in the breach,

Where the Great King’s siege mound rose.

So that, where once our maidens for their young swains sighed,

Those same young men wore bronze, and for the

Want of Athens, there we died.

I’ve heard Aeschylus, and I’ve heard young Euripides. But for power, give me Phrynichus. And he was actually at the battle — well, Aeschylus and his brother were there, too. Aeschylus was also next to me as I came up to Phrynichus, pushing rudely through the crowd. He took my shoulder.

‘Not now,’ he said, pointing to Phrynichus, who was watching his chorus exactly as Agios watched his oarsmen in a sea-fight.

So I stopped and listened. I had been there, of course — and yet I was enraptured by his words. He laid the blame for the fall of the east on Athens. That was the point of his play — that the rape of Ionia was caused by the greed of Athens. Yes, he made Miltiades a hero — and that must have sat ill with some — but the greatest hero was Istes, and he towers over the play like Heracles come to earth.

It was frightening to listen to a man speak words I had spoken in council. And there was the man playing Miltiades — not that he was named, for in those days, that might have been considered impiety — and he stood forth and said: