Today, we are not pirates. Today, we fight for the freedom of the Greeks, although we are far from home and hearth.
And men cheered. Cleitus looked around. He was angry — doubly angry, I think. His men should have made a disturbance by then, shouldn’t they?
Hah! I’m keeping my plan from you children. It helps build the story, does it not? But not many men can say that in one day they bested Cleitus of the Alcmaeonids and Themistocles of Athens in a contest of wits. Let me tell it my own way.
The play was only halfway through when the first man in the crowd gave way to tears. And by the time Istes died (in the play, he asks ‘Where is Athens?’ as he falls to his death), men were weeping, some were pouring dust on their heads and the whole row of Alcmaeonids were looking uneasy under all that dignity and good breeding.
It was a mighty play.
And then there was my contribution.
Not long after Istes’ death, when the angry crowd was to understand that the maidens of Miletus were being ravished offstage by the Persian archers, I saw a man come to Cleitus. His face was broad and puffy — or did I imagine that? And when he whispered into his master’s ear, Cleitus flushed red and stood up.
We were separated by ten horse-lengths, but the gods meant him to know. I caught his eye. And I smiled.
Whatever the news was, it passed from man to man along the Alcmaeonid family seats. Several of them pointed at me.
Aeschylus watched them, and then Sophanes pushed up next to me.
‘What have you done?’ he asked.
‘An act of piety and justice,’ I said quietly.
I wasn’t there to see it, but Cleon told the tale well. This is what happened.
In a south-side brothel owned by the Alcmaeonids, a group of oarsmen swaggered in demanding wine — no uncommon thing during the feast of Dionysus. But when they had their wine, they demanded to see all the girls, and having chosen one, they beat the owner and his bruisers to death with their fists. Four men died. The girl they took away with them.
Oh, it’s a nasty business, children.
Out by the tanneries, a small crowd descended on a taverna known to be owned by one of the gangs of toughs who ‘organized’ things in the town. They pulled four men out of the taverna and stabbed them to death. The four men were literally cut to ribbons.
Up on the hill by the Acropolis, another pair of bruisers were caught by a small mob and cudgelled to death. Sailors were blamed.
But the worst atrocity, in the eyes of the ‘good men’, was that someone — or some group of men — invaded one of the largest Alcmaeonid farms. In fact, it was Cleitus’s home farm. His workers were badly beaten, and every horse in his barns was killed, throats cut with knives. Every horse.
Not everything I planned came off. I had wanted my own horse back, but the men who were sent to the farm misunderstood, and my nice mare died with all their stock. I hadn’t meant so many men to die — ten is a big body count for a peaceable city — but when you make soup, the vegetables are best cut small.
I did what had to be done. I wanted the Alcmaeonids to be struck with terror. I didn’t want them to consider fighting back.
I couldn’t be certain what the consequences of my little gambit would be. And perhaps the consequences would have been less, if not for Phrynichus’s play.
Cleitus had meant for the play to be cancelled, or if not cancelled, he’d planned a disturbance in the Agora that would have forced the magistrates to take action. That’s what should have happened, but his bruisers were cooling corpses by then, their shades already far on the road to Hades. I’d paid another crowd of oarsmen and their friends to attend the play. I packed the crowd to get it cheering, but that was unnecessary, and I regret that I thought so little of Phrynichus. I didn’t pay them to attack the Alcmaeonids. That happened all by itself.
The end of the play set off a convulsion of sorrow and regret. Phrynichus’s words brought home to the mass of men what the fall of Miletus had meant — and what role they had played, or not played. Never once had he named the Alcmaeonids, or spoken harshly of the power of Persian gold — but when men dried their eyes after the last speech, a demand by a Persian general that all Greeks submit or share the fate of Miletus, the crowd turned on the Alcmaeonids like wild dogs.
They were pelted with filth, and their retainers were beaten. At first, men were restrained, both by the prestige of the aristocrats and by fear of their bruisers — but there were no bruisers in evidence.
Then some of the oarsmen grew bolder and pressed forward.
But the aristocrats weren’t cowards — far from it. These were the leaders of Athens, and swords appeared, despite the law. Commoners were cut down.
The area behind the stands was now enveloped in the chaos of a formless fight. I pushed my way there, past men trying to join the fight and others attempting to flee it. I wanted Cleitus — I wanted to see his face.
Instead, I saw Themistocles. He was grinning from ear to ear, and yet he was struggling to restrain some thetes who had cudgels and were trying to finish off a fallen man.
Themistocles shook his head at me. ‘You see what you’ve done?’ he roared — not that he was displeased.
I pushed past him, looking for Cleitus. I took a blow on the shoulder and I wondered if the Alcmaeonids would be finished off right here in a massacre by the Royal Stoa, but the crowd wanted more and less than blood, and already the older aristocrats were clear of the crowd. And running. A sight that the demos never forgot.
Cleitus was holding the crowd back with a dozen armed men. The thetes feared his sword and his ability to use it.
I didn’t. I pushed forward through the last edge of lower-class men, and I laughed at him.
As if by prompt on the stage, Paramanos appeared with my slave girl in tow. Her eyes widened when she saw me — until then, as I later heard, she’d assumed the worst. If there can be worse than working in a brothel in Athens.
I grabbed her hand and she came with me.
‘I have back what is mine,’ I called to Cleitus.
‘You’re a dead man,’ he roared at me.
And then he ran, pursued by the sound of my laughter.
I gave her her freedom, as I had promised. It was a year or more late, and I paid her the best damages I could, hard silver for her lost year. She was never again the open-faced, friendly companion of our first weeks together. The gods had used her and cast her away, and I had forgotten her, who had sworn to save her. It’s not a pretty story. How many men did she service in the Agora because I was heartsick?
But we made the Athenian aristocrats pay. No Alcmaeonid dared come into the streets for weeks thereafter, and my court case was won by the absence of my opponent, and the unanimity of the jury was a sign of the collapse of aristocratic power. Miltiades argued my case with a deep voice and an unworried countenance, because he knew he was going to win — both as my proxenos and in his own case. No jury in Athens would convict Miltiades of anything after Phrynichus’s play. And the Alcmaeonid political machine died with their handlers. I’m afraid I taught the Athenians a terrible lesson, and they still fear the demos.
But I smile to think that Phrynichus and I saved Athenian democracy from the Alcmaeonids so that the man who wanted to be tyrant could save it from the Medes. The gods — who is so foolish as to not believe in the gods? — work in the strangest ways.
Aristides was distant for the next week, until my case was resolved. He was no fool, and he knew where the muscle had come from, and so did Themistocles. I went back to staying with Phrynichus, who was now deluged with money and offers of more from admirers as distant as Hieron of Syracuse.
Phrynichus knew I’d done something, but I never let on exactly what — and yet, by having Agios and Paramanos and Black and Cleon for dinner every night, Phrynichus became untouchable. We kept fifty oarsmen in the streets around his house at all hours, on Miltiades’ money.
But on the day that Miltiades was released — the jury refused to hear the charges read, which had precedent in Athenian law, and seemed to satisfy everyone — I met him and Aristides together with Themistocles. We met as
