‘We’ll be fine.’ Zosime stood up to kiss me.
I kissed her back as Kadous opened up the gate, and I followed Ambrakis out into the lane. Over the wall opposite, I could hear Mikos’ infant son fussing until someone distracted him with a cheerful song about a cockerel singing ki-kiriki-ki. I wondered if the old fool was really the father of the second child now swelling his wife’s belly. Zosime had her doubts, and it’s rarely wise to second-guess my beloved. An Athenian citizen might be absolute master over those living in his household, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows everything that happens inside his gates.
On the main road, Ambrakis strode on ahead of me. People glanced over their shoulders when they wondered what had blotted out the sun. They quickly got out of his way and I hurried along behind him.
As we approached the city, I wondered if Aristarchos had heard any rumours about who might be called to read for the magistrates selecting the next Dionysia playwrights. He wouldn’t be one of this year’s paymasters. It hadn’t been long enough since he’d been selected to offer that particular service to the gods, over and above paying his taxes to the city. I’d been very lucky. Aristarchos hadn’t stinted when he’d financed my play, from the first rehearsal to the fat purse of silver he’d given us after the competition, to celebrate the chorus’s final dance.
I’d realised how very lucky I’d been when I got my second chance at a Dionysia play. I was never invited to Tolmaeos’ house, to discuss my plans and needs. I only met him twice before he walked in the festival procession as the populace honoured those great men offering up their wealth for the good of the city. For everything else, through the months of rehearsal, I dealt with his secretary, Myskon. The sour-faced Syracusan wanted every sixteenth of an obol accounted for, and he had to be convinced every single time that every single thing couldn’t be got cheaper somewhere, somehow. It had been an education in how wealthy men stay rich, and it had been exhausting.
As we passed through the gate and walked through the city, I was forced to admit, as Dionysos is my judge, that such miserliness had nothing to do with my play coming third. Isagoras was an experienced chorus master who had done a good job. So had Lysicrates, Menekles and Apollonides in their respective roles. If we hadn’t had the most expensive costumes and masks, the ones we did have were perfectly good.
Something about the play simply hadn’t struck a chord with the audience. Athens wasn’t ready for a comedy about a pack of dogs trying to persuade Zeus to recognise their claim to live undisturbed and well-fed in a country temple’s precinct, when cats led by a slinky Egyptian feline sought to charm the old priestess into giving them precedence and first pick of the scraps from the sacrifices burned on the altar. The audience hadn’t pelted us with nuts, and they’d laughed in the right places, even if they hadn’t laughed as long or as loud as I’d hoped. The play had been good enough to be placed third, and Tolmaeos had been content to accept congratulations from his well-born friends. He had thanked me, and I hadn’t seen him since.
But as far as I was concerned, my months of work had been in vain. Athens had seen my play and had already forgotten it. No one from any of the rural theatres had approached us to have The Hounds staged out in Attica to entertain a country audience who might be more easily pleased.
‘This way.’ Ambrakis broke into my disconsolate thoughts.
‘Wait. Where are we going?’ I’d been assuming we were heading for Aristarchos’ spacious house, in the heart of the city and so well placed for the agora, the Areopagus and the Pnyx. Wealthy men who are also wise repay Athena for her favour by taking a keen interest in the laws, debates and court cases that underpin and defend our democracy. Aristarchos certainly does. But Ambrakis had taken a street leading east.
He shrugged. ‘Temple of Olympian Zeus.’
That was no real answer, but I tried not to take out my bad temper on Ambrakis. My father had taught me better. I also knew Aristarchos considered one measure of a man was how well he treated his own slaves and other people’s. At least I’d have a shorter walk home.
This temple’s precinct was nowhere near as busy as the Acropolis. I could see a few visitors gawking at the handful of half-completed columns and the roughly finished platform that should have supported the rest of what would have been a truly massive building. There were no craftsmen or slaves working here though, and there hadn’t been since before I was born. Neither Pericles nor anyone else had any intention of paying for this ambitious project to be finished.
But this was still sacred ground. There had been a temple here to the greatest of gods since heroes walked this earth. So I breathed a humble supplication to almighty Zeus, and promised to accept being passed over for the next Dionysia with good grace.
It was a fitting place for such humility. The unfinished temple has been left to serve as a perpetual reminder of the perils of arrogance. The tyrant Peisistratos demolished the ancient shrine to rebuild it as a monument to his own glory as much as to honour Olympian Zeus. The god bided his time and had his revenge for that insult. The tyrant’s own sons demolished their father’s work, as they sought to build an even bigger temple, greater than any in Athens or far beyond. The greater the hubris, the greater the punishment from the gods. Hippias and Hipparchos were soon overthrown, and Athens took the road to democracy.
I saw Aristarchos walking towards us along the side of the temple.
