alive. His wife had arranged it with Euphoria, although neither was present for the dinner. Instead, most of the men who came were older men. Peneleos was there, and he was my age, as was his older brother Epictetus; and Bion was there because he was my right hand and welcome any time. But the other men were older — Draco seemed older than the hills, and Diocles was only a little younger than Mater, and Hilarion, once the life of the party and a poor farmer, was now a cheerful and wealthy man.
They were my neighbours. We also invited Idomeneus down from Cithaeron, and Alcaeus of Miletus, who had status in Plataea by virtue of being the lord, in effect if not in fact, of fifty good spearmen who were now citizens.
We had a good sacrifice up the hill. I remember that I watched the skies for a day, praying for good weather, and I remember that we still had to squelch our way across the best barley field because we’d had rain, but our little altar was high and dry on the hilltop. Myron made the sacrifice, and he mentioned my father in his prayer. And then we gave the fat and the bones to the god, and squelched our way back down to the house with the slaves carrying the skin and all the meat, and we had quite a dinner — a whole sheep. The slaves shared in it. I had quite a few slaves by then — with my wife’s I had twenty. Too many, and they were starting to breed more.
We had a proper symposium, too, with good talk about civic duty and the difference between men’s laws and god’s laws. It was all very pleasant, and then we began to talk of Persia.
Myron held up his hand and we all stopped talking. ‘I want to discuss a matter of business,’ he said. He had quite a presence by then. I could remember him as a young farmer, but by that time he was an orator and a man of immense dignity.
‘Arimnestos, I intend to put it to the vote after the first feast of Heracles that you be the polemarch of the city. Polemarch and strategos, both.’
‘What’s a strategos?’ Hilarion asked.
That was a fair question. In those days, many towns had a polemarch, but only Athens and Sparta had strategoi. They were officers — real officers, the way we had ofcers when we served Miltiades. Every strategos had responsibility for a body of men when the phalanx formed, and this made the phalanx more flexible in combat. The old polemarchs were often politicians and sometimes soldiers, but they
On that evening, Plataea had perhaps two thousand hoplites — armoured warriors. We’d grown in the last ten years, and the Milesians had brought us new fighters, and we were richer. Bion and Hermogenes, for instance — both men had been slaves, and yet now they were prosperous farmers with full armour. Wealth — individual wealth — translated directly into fighting power in those days. In my father’s time, we’d fielded fifteen hundred hoplites only by freeing slaves and putting them — virtually unarmed — into the rear ranks.
So, our military power was greater. And Myron proposed formalizing my control of it. I nodded. ‘Of course,’ I said.
‘This is no empty honour,’ Myron said. ‘There is a Persian fleet on the seas. News has reached me that the Medes intend to sack Naxos, and then they will come to Attica. Athens will expect us to stand with them.’
It was still chilly in the evenings. We had a brazier in the middle of the room, but the men were still huddled in their himations, and I remember that I could see my breath when I spoke.
‘This spring?’ Bion asked.
‘This summer, at least,’ Myron answered. ‘Are we ready, Arimnestos?’
I rolled off my couch and cursed the cold floor. ‘We are as ready as a city at peace can be,’ I answered. ‘We dance the Pyrrhiche at least twice as often as we used to do. I take the younger men up the mountain as often as I can — and I will make it more often this spring. Short of war itself, the hunt and the dance are our best methods of training.’
Hilarion shrugged and pulled his cloak over his feet. ‘Why do we need to fight the Persians?’ he asked. ‘I know you all think me slow-witted — but what has the Great King ever done to me?’
‘Not a thing,’ I answered. ‘He is a good ruler and a great man, or so I hear. But, Hilarion, when is the last time you fought in the phalanx?’
‘You know as well as me — the fight at the bridge, where we helped Athens against the men of Euboea.’ He grinned. ‘I didn’t really fight, either. I did some pushing from the fifth rank, I think.’
‘We’ve had fifteen years of peace because Athens has stood between us and Thebes.’ I paused to spit, and every man present joined me.
Diocles nodded. ‘True enough,’ he said.
‘We’re about to pay for those years of peace,’ Myron said. ‘The price will be high. And if the rest of Boeotia submits to the Great King, we will be alone. Our city will be wide open when we march away.’
Myron’s words brought the reality home to every man in the room.
‘By Ares!’ Peneleos said. ‘Is it so bad? Is this certain?’
Myron looked at me — as I was his principal source of information.
‘Peneleos, when there are dark clouds in the north, do you expect rain?’ I asked.
He nodded and raised an eyebrow. ‘I expect it, but it does not always come. Sometimes the rain goes to Thespiae or Hisiae.’
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘The Great King may never take Naxos. He may forget Athens, or the men of Athens may make a peace with him. A storm might come up and wreck his fleet — it’s happened before. But the dark clouds are right there, friends, and we would be foolish not to be prepared.’
‘I plan to ask the assembly for money to repair the walls and raise two new bastions — all stone — to cover the gate,’ Myron said. ‘I will ask that every free man send a slave to work, so that the repairs are done immediately, as soon as the planting is in. And I will be asking for the richest men to contribute to the towers. I will pay for one of them myself.’ He looked around.
Bion gave me a slight nod of the head.
‘I will pay for one third of the second tower,’ I said, ‘with the help of Bion and Alcaeus.’
Idomeneus surprised us. ‘I will pay for one third,’ he said. ‘From my own funds,’ he added.
Diocles and Hilarion and Draco muttered among themselves, and Epictetus and Peneleos, sharing a couch, leaned in, and in the end the five of them agreed to share the cost of a third of the tower.
As the men gathered to walk home, I found myself with Peneleos and Epictetus.
‘I have a hard time seeing myself as a leading man,’ Peneleos said. ‘I’m a second son. I am
I laughed. ‘You’re older than me,’ I said. ‘And I’m about to be polemarch.’
Bion shook his head. ‘Plataea lost a generation in the three battles,’ he said. ‘And in the fights with Thebes before that. Think of your fathers and brothers — all dead.’
That was a sobering thought, but a true one. Myron had been my father’s friend. My father should have been here to be polemarch, and Diocles’ father should have been here, and Epictetus’s father, and my brother, and Hilarion’s older brother — on and on.
‘We’re a city of young men,’ Hilarion quipped.
‘If we have to fight the Medes, we’ll be a city of widows,’ Bion answered him.
The assembly was dull enough, and I remember none of it — not even my formal elevation to polemarch and strategos after the feast of Heracles, thirty days after the summer solstice. I was allowed, as polemarch, to choose the other two strategoi myself. We’d decided to have three, one for each of the towns that made up Plataea before the alliance with Athens turned us into a real city.
Right away, my new rank plunged me into politics. I wanted Idomeneus and Alcaeus — or at least Lysius — as officers. I wanted the strategoi to be men who had been under the hand of Ares, who knew the sound of spears and shields. But all of us — even Lysius and Ajax — lived in one district, over by Hisiae. So I wasted good workdays going to meetings to talk with the local men in the other two districts. I knew them all — there were only three thousand citizens back then, and we all knew each other pretty well. I kept hoping to find some retired mercenary, some man who had served under Miltiades or even with the Medes.
Now that I think of it, in those districts closest to the river they had most of the good farmland, and I suspect their sons didn’t need to go to sea to win a few silver coins. Ours did, over by the mountain.
There were good
